Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

CITY OF WESTMINSTER BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Read the Third time, and passed, with amendments.

KING'S COLLEGE LONDON BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Order for Third Reading read.

To be read the Third time upon Tuesday 15 October.

BODMIN MOOR COMMONS BILL [Lords]

Ordered,
That the Promoters of the Bodmin Moor Commons Bill [Lords] shall have leave to suspend proceedings thereon in order to proceed with the Bill, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament, provided that the Agents for the Bill give notice to the Clerks in the Private Bill Office of their intention to suspend further proceedings not later than the day before the close of the present Session and that all Fees due on the Bill up to that date be paid;
That, if the Bill is brought from the Lords in the next Session, the Agents for the Bill shall deposit in the Private Bill Office a declaration signed by them, stating that the Bill is the same, in every respect, as the Bill which was brought from the Lords in the present Session;
That, as soon as a certificate by one of the Clerks in the Private Bill Office, that such a declaration has been so deposited, has been laid upon the Table of the House, the Bill shall be read the first and second time and committed (and shall be recorded in the Journal of this House as having been so read and committed) and shall be committed to the Chairman of Ways and Means, who shall make such Amendments thereto as have been made by the Committee in the present Session, and shall report the Bill as amended to the House forthwith, and the Bill, so amended, shall be ordered to lie upon the Table;
That no further Fees shall be charged in respect of any proceedings on the Bill in respect of which Fees have already been incurred during the present Session;
That these Orders be Standing Orders of the House.—-[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Oral Answers to Questions — SOCIAL SECURITY

Computer Errors

Mr. Hinchliffe: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what measures his Department takes to monitor the impact of computer errors on claimants' benefits. [36957]

The Minister for Social Security and Disabled People (Mr. Alistair Burt): All new computer systems, and changes to existing systems, are thoroughly tested before they are put into operation, and they are monitored once they are in operation. All errors are investigated and corrected, and their impact on operations is analysed. Errors affecting benefit payments are corrected as soon as possible and steps are taken to identify all customers affected by them.

Mr. Hinchliffe: Is the Minister aware of the lengthy correspondence that I have had with his Department concerning my constituent, Mr. Peter Sutton, whose benefit was affected by computer errors, to his detriment? In particular, has the Minister had an opportunity to look at the letter of 16 May, sent from the private office of his colleague, the Under-Secretary of State, saying that some 10,200 claimants' benefits had been affected as a direct consequence of computer error? As many of these people are old-age pensioners or on extremely low incomes, this is a serious situation. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that any hardship affecting them is addressed as a matter of urgency?

Mr. Burt: I am aware of the correspondence that the hon. Gentleman has had with my Department. It is important to put this matter into context: some 250 million transactions are produced by computer in the benefits system every year, and 94 per cent. of all benefits are paid right—and right first time. If errors are identified, we do a trawl to find out who else might have been affected. The hon. Gentleman might like to know that the trawl of cases similar to that of his constituent was completed last week. The preliminary figures identify some 11,500 cases that have been affected by this type of error. Benefits will be corrected, and compensation is payable in certain circumstances if there have been delays. We try to ensure that all systems are brought up to date, and there are regular audits to try to ensure that errors do not occur. However, when they happen—no system is foolproof—we take all steps possible to put matters right.

Sir David Madel: Is my hon. Friend aware that the Child Support Agency continues to make computer errors when it sends out demands? In particular, will he ask the agency to be careful not to mix up overtime and basic wages? It often makes errors in that area.

Mr. Burt: As we know, the calculation of child support is complex, and it must be done correctly. I shall draw the attention of the Minister concerned to the point raised by my hon. Friend.

Mr. Alan Howarth: What consideration has the Minister given to the consequences of computer errors if he carries through his intention to sell lists of benefit claimants to private sector organisations, as reported in The Daily Telegraph of 15 May? Would it not be a gross breach of confidence to do so? Is it not an error of judgment on the part of Ministers to expose people in poverty to the temptations and taunts of advertisers? Will the Minister give hon. Members his assurance that the Benefits Agency database of clients will not be made available to outside organisations or to individuals, except for purposes that are intrinsic to—and confined to—the administration of benefits?

Mr. Burt: We never had any intention of doing any such thing, and the hon. Gentleman might have been better advised to raise the question elsewhere so that I did not need to tell him that in such a public forum.

Asylum Seekers

Mr. John Marshall: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is his latest estimate of the annual cost of social security payments to asylum seekers. [36958]

The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Peter Lilley): If I had not introduced the changes to benefits for asylum seekers in February, it is estimated that the cost would soon have exceeded £400 million a year. Our changes will save more than £270 million, but we will continue to spend just over £140 million a year supporting asylum seekers.

Mr. Marshall: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the types of abuse of the system that many of us have come to expect from asylum seekers? One came to see me on Saturday and thought that she was eligible for housing benefit of £240 a week, or £12,480 a year. Is that reasonable? Is it not right that the Government have stamped down on such unjustified claims? Is it not irresponsible of the Opposition to have opposed that? Is not that yet another new danger from new Labour?

Mr. Lilley: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It was only sensible to take the measures that we have taken to prevent the waste of large sums of public money on supporting bogus asylum seekers. The Opposition are grossly irresponsible in pledging to restore that money: they will have to find that £300 million elsewhere in the social security budget—they will take money away from British citizens who are genuine claimants to give to bogus claimants from abroad.

Mr. Gapes: Will the Secretary of State give careful consideration this coming winter to any representations he may receive from Churches, organisations running night shelters and organisations providing support to the destitute that might lead him to introduce new proposals to deal with the outrageous changes he has introduced which have brought hardship to so many men, women and children?

Mr. Lilley: Of course I will consider carefully any representations I receive from any quarter, especially those the hon. Gentleman mentioned. I draw comfort from the fact that the frightening prognostications that were

made when my policies were introduced have not materialised—I do not believe they will materialise. Claimants who are found to be genuine at the end of the process will have their benefits backdated, so that those who support asylum seekers they know to be genuine will have their costs reimbursed.

Mrs. Roe: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, if total social security spending is not to rise, any increase in spending on asylum seekers would have to be balanced by lower benefits for British citizens? Since the Labour party now claims that it would not increase the total social security budget, will my right hon. Friend tell the House whether the Labour party has told him how it would pay for the extra spending on asylum seekers that it proposes and which British benefits it would cut to pay for it?

Mr. Lilley: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The dilemma she points out is exactly that faced by the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith), who has pledged to restore those benefits. He has had the rug pulled from under him by his leader, who has let it be known in The Daily Telegraph that he agrees with me and not with his spokesman. An interesting article by Boris Johnson states:
What was the Blair view of Peter Lilley's attempt to crack down on bogus asylum-seekers? Was he outraged like the Guardian editorialists … Did he condemn
them?
Far from it.
He continues—with words attributed by a Labour source to the Labour leader:
'"I think Peter Lilley makes a lot of sense… it's a bit much all these people saying they won't be a charge on the state, and then claiming asylum when they get here.' The moment he sees daylight between himself and the Tories, Blair closes the gap.

Personal Pensions

Mr. Jim Cunningham: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will make a statement on his power to determine the levels of fees and charges levied by providers of personal pensions. [36959]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Oliver Heald): We have always made it clear that competition and disclosure are the preferred means of ensuring that charges levied are not excessive. We have no plans to use the powers referred to.

Mr. Cunningham: Given that £16 billion is paid out every year in pension rebates—£4 billion of which goes on fees and charges—and that the people that are most affected are the poorer in society, when will the Minister do something about the 25 per cent. charge?

Mr. Heald: There are 5.6 million people with personal pensions in Britain, and 99 per cent. of them are as well off—or better off—as if they had remained in the state earnings-related pension scheme, typically by up to £1,000 a year on their pension at today's prices. That is not my view, but the view of the Securities and Investments Board. What is more, in its recent report, "Disclosure: One Year On", the Personal Investment Authority suggests that competition and disclosure are


working, and that there is evidence of lower charges and better surrender values. The Government's policy is working, and there are no plans to introduce powers of the sort that have been referred to.

Mr. Wilkinson: Will my hon. Friend take time during the summer recess, like the Select Committee on Social Security, to go to Chile to see how state-approved personalised pension schemes that are funded really work to provide both a very high level of benefit in retirement and an engine for growth, which has been sustained at over 6 per cent. per annum over the past few years?

Mr. Heald: Like the Select Committee, my right hon. Friend is considering visiting Chile to see the progress that has been made there. We should not forget that, in the United Kingdom, £600 billion is invested in private pension provision. That gives a much better future for people in this country than would otherwise be the case.

Income Support

Mr. Hutton: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what percentage of children are in households dependent on income support; and, as a percentage of total children, how this compares with 1979. [36960]

Mr. Burt: In Great Britain, 25.6 per cent. of children are members of families where income support is claimed. A direct comparison with 1979 is not possible.

Mr. Hutton: I thought that the Minister would say that a comparison was not possible. Is it not clear that such a shameful figure reveals the extent of the failure of the Government's economic and social policies since 1979? Will the Minister take the opportunity now to apologise to the millions of families and children who have been so badly let down by the policies that the Government have pursued?

Mr. Burt: A direct comparison is not possible because of the different structure of the benefits involved. The hon. Gentleman's point about the number of children in receipt of income-related benefits reflects, first, a rise in unemployment, which was not experienced by the United Kingdom alone, and, secondly, a change in the structure of families.
The Government's response has been to work hard to reduce unemployment, which is why unemployment has decreased so spectacularly in this country. Our unemployment record is much better than those of our partners in Europe. Secondly, in terms of family structure, we have done all that we can through the benefit system to encourage people into work, and to ensure that there is a benefit structure that assists lone parents to get back into work and finds ways of encouraging people to look after themselves. That is the proper response of government.

Mr. Bill Walker: Does my hon. Friend agree that there is something sick and sad about people who do not realise that the take-home money that has been available since 1979—to people from all grades and of all standards—has increased substantially, and that that includes the moneys available to those on benefit? The sadness is that the more we help people, the more we are chastised.

Mr. Burt: My hon. Friend makes a more than valid point. Average income has increased for all family types

since 1979. When a substantial survey was last conducted of couples on income support with children, it was found that they were 19 per cent. better off under our benefits than under those of the Labour Government.

Mr. Wicks: The Minister says that there is no comparison with 1979. The Library informs me, however, that, in 1979, 7 per cent. of children were dependent on means-tested benefits, whereas 26 per cent. are now. Does not the fact that one in four children are dependent on means-tested benefits show the Government's neglect of Britain's children? Given that, in 1979, Conservatives promised to reduce dependency on the state, will the Minister tell us what has gone wrong?

Mr. Burt: It seems that the hon. Gentleman was not listening to the earlier exchanges. There is no valid comparison, because of differences in benefits. The Government have tried to reduce dependency by getting people back into work and altering the benefit structure to ensure that people go from welfare into work. That is something that the hon. Gentleman should support. It is in direct contrast to the Labour party's policy of work to welfare, first by cutting child benefit for 16 and 17-year-olds and, secondly, by introducing a minimum wage, which would reduce the job opportunities of many families and make their children much poorer.

Mr. Thurnham: Is the Minister aware that, in France, child benefit can be withdrawn in cases where children persistently truant from school? Will he bear that in mind when considering any new proposals for paying child benefit?

Mr. Burt: My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. I understand that the provision in France is rarely used. The Department for Education and Employment and local authorities work extremely hard, through their welfare officers, to ensure that children appreciate the benefits of, and the need for going to, school. I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that it would be a shame if, as children approach further education at the age of 16, they faced a Labour Government who would take child benefit away from them.

Reduced Earnings Allowances

Ms Quin: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what recent representations he has received about changes in reduced earnings allowances. [36961]

Mr. Morgan: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what recent representations he has had in relation to the implementation of the reduced earnings allowance rule. [36969]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Roger Evans): A number of hon. Members have written to Ministers about these changes.

Ms Quin: Does the Minister appreciate the distress and hardship that has been caused to many people who have come to rely on this allowance? In my constituency surgery, male pensioners have broken down in tears as a result of the changes. At the very least, could not some transitional help be made available to such people?

Mr. Evans: I fully appreciate and accept the argument that those who have had the benefit altered are affected adversely by that and are not happy with it, but the position is clear. Reduced earnings allowance is to compensate for reduced earnings, and retirement allowance is to compensate for a reduced retirement pension. The intention of Parliament in 1988 was that, when people passed pension age and ceased to be in regular employment, they passed from one allowance to the other, but the way in which the rules operated were arbitrary and unfair, and a number of people who, for excellent reasons, under the arrangements as they were, have lost reduced earnings allowance and passed to retirement allowance, might fairly complain that some have gained and that they have lost. We have made the scheme reasonable and consistent.

Mr. Morgan: Does the Minister agree that British citizens such as my constituent, Reg Beck, had the right to expect that, when they were told that they would receive reduced earnings allowance for life, that meant for life—not that it would suddenly be cut off in March 1996 by this gimcrack and mean legislative change?

Mr. Evans: Reduced earnings allowance should never have been awarded for life. There are only two circumstances in which that can have happened.

Mr. Flynn: What did the Minister say on "Welsh Lobby"?

Mr. Evans: I shall come to "Welsh Lobby" in a moment.
One is when a party had retired before pensionable age and, due to the defects in the rules, could never thereafter pass from one allowance to the other. A number of persons in that category have been so notified. We are also aware of a small number of cases in which the Benefits Agency has erred. There is a scheme for compensation for official error if financial loss can be shown to have arisen directly from it.

Mr. Harry Greenway: I welcome the scheme announced by my hon. Friend for rectifying official errors, but does he agree that on this question the Opposition are shedding crocodile tears? When will he take into account their intention, if they are ever elected, to get rid of child benefit for children between the ages of 16 and 18? As always, they say one thing and do another.

Madam Speaker: Order. Supplementary questions must relate directly to the main question. This is a serious issue.

Mr. Wigley: Is the Minister aware that I have in my hand a letter from his Department to a constituent of mine giving a categorical assurance in black and white that he would receive reduced earnings allowance for life, and that he, like countless others, has undertaken his financial planning on that basis? Given what the Minister has said, and what has been said on the "Welsh Lobby" programme, will he now give an undertaking that everyone, but everyone, who has been losing money under the changes will now receive compensation for those losses?

Mr. Evans: Ministers have made it clear that each case that is put to us will be looked at most carefully.

[HON. MEMBERS: "What does that mean?"] It means that we shall examine what was said and, if there is a proper basis for saying that the Benefits Agency has made an official error and that there has been reliance upon it, there is a scheme for compensation, but each case will be looked at on its merits.

Mr. Bradley: May I press the Minister further on that point? Did he say on television that, where the reduced earnings allowance has caused hardship, he will review those cases? What criteria will he use to do that? What level of hardship must have applied? How much money will he put forward to ensure that hardship can be alleviated for the hundreds of people who budgeted to receive the reduced earnings allowance for the rest of their lives?

Mr. Evans: Some 4 million files are in the process of being looked through and carefully reconsidered, because the test as to whether someone received one allowance or the other after retirement was not working properly under the old regulations. We estimate that about 2,500 people, to whom compensation in the region of about £10 million will be paid, were wrongly transferred under the old arrangements from one allowance to retirement allowance. Every case will be looked at to see whether that happened.
There are, however, a small number of cases—I stress that it is a small number of cases to our knowledge—where, wrongly or because of an unusual application in certain circumstances of the old regulations, people have grounds for concern that they were promised in writing that they would receive the reduced earnings allowance for life. There is a well-established scheme for compensation if official error can be shown and it can be shown that financial loss has arisen as a result.
The interesting question, which the hon. Gentleman did not address, is that the cost of reversing the new regulations would be £25 million this year, and £35 million next year and thereafter. Has the Labour party pledged to alter these changes?

Private Pensions

Mr. Dunn: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security when he last met representatives of the private pensions sector to discuss improvements in private pension provision. [36962]

Mr. Lilley: Earlier this month, I addressed two conferences about pensions, and I have frequent contacts with representatives of the pensions industry.

Mr. Dunn: When my right hon. Friend next meets representatives of the industry, will he tell them that the Government have no plans whatever to nationalise private pension funds or to seek to control them in any way as an aid to state spending? That is the policy of the Labour party, and it is another example of new Labour, new danger, new nightmare for pensioners.

Mr. Lilley: I shall certainly pass on the points that my hon. Friend makes. He is quite right to say that the Opposition have flirted closely with the Singapore scheme, which involves the state running pension


schemes, to the great disadvantage of pensioners in Singapore, whose return since 1980 was only 2 per cent. a year above inflation, whereas private pensions in this country have returned nearly 10 per cent. a year on top of inflation.

Mr. Rogers: Private pensions are all right for people who can afford them. Is the Secretary of State aware that some of my colleagues and I met a group of miners today—some of them amputees—who were disabled early in their careers, that their wages dropped considerably and, as a result, they have spent a lifetime on a very low income? They could not make any provision for retirement and private pensions. They relied on a Government undertaking that they would receive a special hardship allowance as a result of the injuries that they suffered, and that translated into a reduced earnings allowance. The Government have betrayed those people, who have acted in good faith and given great service to this country.

Mr. Lilley: I met some miners myself in Scotland when I was there, and they put their case with impressive eloquence and moderation. I endeavoured to explain, as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary did, that we are simply fulfilling the original intention of Parliament. When, during their working lives, people are incapacitated by injury, they receive a reduced earnings allowance, as the name suggests; when they retire, they receive a reduced retirement pension to match the fact that they were unable to contribute as much into funds as they would if they had been working all the time. That is a fair and sensible system, but it was misapplied. We have merely put it back to what Parliament always intended.

Mr. John Greenway: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the best improvements that we could make to the personal pension regime to encourage more people to opt for such pensions would be the introduction of a minimum contribution for tax relief, regardless of earnings? That would greatly benefit the self-employed, people on low incomes and, I dare say, those to whom the hon. Member for Rhondda (Mr. Rogers) referred. My right hon. Friend may say that this is a matter for our right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but his encouragement would be a great help.

Mr. Lilley: My hon. Friend is right: this is a matter for my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor when he considers his Budget. I know that he has received representations on the subject. As it overlaps with my responsibilities, however, I will certainly discuss it with him.

Mr. Denham: Instead of scaremongering about plans that he knows the Labour party does not have, will the Secretary of State face up to the reality of personal pensions? Will he confirm that it is eight years since so-called appropriate personal pensions were first on sale? Is it not a scandal that, eight years later, according to the Government Actuary, at least 30 per cent. of the savings of a typical woman with a typical personal pension will be lost in fees and charges by the time she retires?
Is not that typical of the Tories and their privatisation of the welfare state? Is not the message clear? The Government are prepared to pour savers' and taxpayers'

money down the drain. Only a Labour Government will provide security in retirement with that money, instead of pouring it down the drain.

Mr. Lilley: We have arranged a system that gives people the option of remaining in SERPS if their circumstances make that more attractive. If, as in the majority of cases, they can do as well or better outside SERPS, they are encouraged to opt out of it and to build up funded personal and occupational pensions totalling some £600 billion, to the great benefit of the country. That means that, in advance of people's retirement, we have saved more funds than all the other European countries put together. The hon. Gentleman may regret that deeply—I know that he does—but the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) has said that the Labour party wants to remove SERPS. In May this year, he wrote, "SERPS must go."

Occupational Pensions

Mrs. Lait: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what steps he is taking to improve the regulation of occupational pensions. [36963]

Mr. Heald: The Pensions Act 1995 will improve security for occupational pension scheme members and increase confidence in private pension provision, but without imposing undue burdens on employers or schemes.

Mrs. Lait: Can my hon. Friend confirm that, during the Bill's passage last year, Labour Members tabled more than 700 amendments, the bulk of which would have increased regulation of occupational pensions? Does he agree that that burdensome and over-regulatory approach constitutes yet another new danger from new Labour?

Mr. Heald: As usual, my hon. Friend is right. In fact, Labour Members tabled not 700 but 740 amendments, most of which would have added to regulation. In the debate the other night, they were doing it again—proposing further regulations. There is danger in this. Over-regulation can put employers off setting up schemes and continuing with them. New Labour, new danger.

Mr. Clapham: The Minister will be aware that, although salary-based schemes provide a minimum pension, the new money purchase schemes that many people have been encouraged to join since 1988 do not. What steps is he taking to improve the benefits provided by contracted-out money purchase schemes?

Mr. Heald: All forms of private pension provision have something to recommend them in individual cases. Salary-related schemes provide excellent benefits and, for some people, so do money purchase schemes, which have the advantage of being more flexible. The Government's policy has been to encourage such flexibility while providing the security that pensioners need if they are to have confidence in the system. The rebates announced earlier this year build on that. Let us not forget that the Labour party is talking about introducing schemes run by trade unions, which would undermine what the Government have done, and involve a guaranteed! minimum pension that would cost up to £5 billion and a flexible decade of retirement costing £15 billion.

Welfare Support

Mr. Viggers: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what is his policy in respect of providing support for those who most need assistance. [36964]

Mr. Burt: Our policy is to focus benefits on those who need them most by improving incentives, bearing down on abuse and encouraging personal responsibility.

Mr. Viggers: A number of my constituents have complained to me about the generosity of benefits paid to those whom they describe as professional claimants, compared with the meagre benefits available to those who have worked all their lives and have become unemployed for the first time. Does my hon. Friend recognise that contrast, does he think that it is fair, and what further action can the Government take to improve the situation?

Mr. Burt: Under present legislation, and under the jobseeker's allowance scheme, the Employment Service works hard to distinguish between those who should be entitled to unemployment and income-related benefits and those who for their own reasons have chosen not to work or to avoid interviews and the like. I assure my hon. Friend that we take this matter seriously. It is important that benefit is paid to those who need it and who have not done anything to put themselves out of the labour market. The new jobseeker's allowance will help in that cause.

Mr. Frank Field: The Government's targeting of benefits means that families who work are penalised, families who save are penalised, and families who tell the truth are penalised. Are the Government proud of the fact that they have doubled the number of families on means-tested assistance, up to one in three of the population?

Mr. Burt: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's premises for a moment. The work that we have done to increase earnings-related benefit, work-related benefit, means that a family in work on family credit are £23 a week better off than if they were on income-related benefit. We have tried to improve the benefits system to make sure that it is worth going into work. Many of the changes announced by the Chancellor a couple of years ago which come into effect this year—earnings top-up and the like—will benefit 750,000 people. That is the right way to set about the problem.

Mr. Churchill: Given the massive scale of social security fraud, when will the Government introduce a national system of workfare for all able-bodied unemployed so as to guarantee them an income while at the same time smoking out those who make multiple fraudulent claims or who are already employed but also drawing benefit?

Mr. Burt: The issue of workfare is more a matter for the Department for Education and Employment. First, as I said earlier, the new system of jobseeker's allowance should distinguish rather better between those who want to work and those who choose for some reason not to work. Secondly, the measures that we have introduced this year, particularly earnings top-up, still try to find a

way to boost the income of those who have just come off benefit so as to make work more attractive. We persist in believing that that is the best way forward.

Ms Lynne: Does the Minister accept that axing the benefits helpline will cause untold hardship to benefit claimants, especially pensioners, who often do not claim what they are due? Will he reconsider the decision, or does he expect organisations such as the citizens advice bureaux and Age Concern to fill the gap?

Mr. Burt: No, it is not a question of that. Local Benefits Agency offices now provide a great deal of support and information for people looking for information about their benefits. All too often, callers to the national helpline had to be redirected to the local Benefits Agency office line, and we prefer that to be the process. The benefits inquiry line, which is specifically designed for queries about disability benefits, remains in place. We have substantially boosted the amount of information that is made available through the Benefits Agency and this good policy will continue.

Mr. Bernard Jenkin: Will my hon. Friend confirm that since 1988 we are spending an extra £1.2 billion on less well-off families and that to claim that more people on means-tested benefits equals increased poverty is a complete distortion of the truth, because in fact it demonstrates that we are helping more and more people in need?

Mr. Burt: My hon. Friend is correct. The changes in benefits in 1988 enabled us to redirect £ 1 billion a year to the poorest families. The Opposition should not criticise that. In contrast with all the difficult decisions that we have made and all the decisions to redirect benefits and target them more effectively, there has been nothing constructive from the Opposition—merely a series of reviews and attempts to think the unthinkable. The Opposition have produced nothing workable, only dissent. It is another example of a party not really ready to govern.

Mr. Chris Smith: Can the Minister tell us how it can possibly have helped those in need for his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to have talks about the disposal of DSS offices, as he is reported to have done on 21 February, with Mr. John Beckwith, chairman of the Premier Club, who is usually employed drumming up money in return for the dubious privilege of meeting the Prime Minister? Will the Minister tell us whether such a meeting took place, and will he now rule out Mr. Beckwith's participation in any such disposal?

Mr. Burt: In the past four or five minutes the House has had a sensible discussion about the targeting of benefits. It is a shame that the hon. Gentleman cannot rise to the quality of that discussion.

Disability Living Allowance

Rev. Martin Smyth: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what estimate he has made of the impact of changes in the mobility components of disability living allowance on care of residents in residential and retirement homes. [36965]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Andrew Mitchell): The changes will affect only people who for benefit purposes are treated as hospital in-patients—that is, where the NHS is responsible for maintaining them free of charge, regardless of where they are receiving treatment.

Rev. Martin Smyth: Does the Minister accept that one of the privileges of old age is the ability to get out and about? People may be in residential homes because of their age and yet qualify for mobility allowance. Why should they not be allowed to get out and about rather than be prisoners in those homes?

Mr. Mitchell: I understand the hon. Gentleman's point, but I must emphasise that the measure that he has raised brings disability living allowance, mobility, into line with disability living allowance, care. Also, attendance allowance would stop after four weeks in hospital or after 12 weeks for children. It is usual for social security benefits to be withdrawn or downrated when a person goes into hospital.

Sir Donald Thompson: Will my hon. Friend discuss with his right hon. and hon. Friends in the Department of Health the way in which local authorities are manipulating those benefits and old people to the disadvantage of those old people by ensuring that they do not go into private residential homes, but block beds until they can go into the vastly more expensive local authority homes?

Mr. Mitchell: I will pass on my hon. Friend's comments. I must emphasise that the changes are about targeting disability living allowance, mobility, and not about cutting disability benefits. We now spend about £21 billion on sick and disabled people, and that is a record of which the Government can be very proud.

Back-to-work Bonus

Mr. Waterson: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans he has to introduce a back-to-work bonus. [36966]

Mr. Lilley: We shall be introducing a back-to-work bonus in the jobseeker's allowance and income support from 7 October. This will allow an estimated 150,000 people per year to receive a tax-free lump sum of up to £1,000 when they leave benefit to take up work.

Mr. Waterson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is just one of a number of excellent proposals to help people off welfare and into work? Does he agree that the national minimum wage would have the opposite effect by destroying jobs? Is that not just another example of new Labour, new danger?

Mr. Lilley: My hon. Friend is quite right. This is one of an array of imaginative measures to get people off benefit and into work. Almost all the measures proposed by the Labour party—such as the minimum wage and the social chapter, which would destroy jobs—are means of getting people out of work and on to benefit.

Madam Speaker: I call Mr. Skinner.

Mr. Skinner: The Minister is not ready. [Interruption.] That is better.
Is it true that the Government, worried by all the ministerial resignations, plan to introduce a back-to-work bonus for Ministers who resign, or will they have to settle for a reduced earnings allowance? Ministers are to get severance pay while the rest of the workers have it taken away from them.

Mr. Lilley: I am sorry that I nearly missed participating in the Lilley and Skinner show. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we are more interested in the serious business of getting people back into real jobs than making petty party political points.

Lone Parents

Mr. Thomason: To ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what assessment he has made of the Australian JET—jobs education and training—scheme in respect of helping lone parents out of dependency. [36967]

Mr. Andrew Mitchell: I have examined the Australian JET scheme. We shall be basing our scheme—to be piloted from next April—on more successful models.

Mr. Thomason: Can my hon. Friend confirm that the JET scheme is inefficient and costly, but it is close to the heart of the Opposition? Perhaps it is an example of yet another new danger. Has my hon. Friend looked at other schemes in other parts of the world?

Mr. Mitchell: Yes. The Opposition have backed the wrong horse. In their lust for glib soundbites, they overlooked the detail. The Australian JET scheme overstates savings and understates the costs involved. They should look to the GAIN—greater avenues for independence—scheme in California if they want the taxpayer to save money through a scheme that is effective in getting people back to work. From next April, the Government will be piloting a state of the art scheme that will have learnt from other schemes around the world and will be successful and effective in helping lone parents back to work.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER

Lichfield

Mr. Fabricant: To ask the Prime Minister what analysis he has made of the effect of the Government's social and economic policies on the people of Lichfield; and if he will make statement. [36986]

The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): Lichfield has benefited fully from Government policies which have given the United Kingdom a stronger recovery than any comparable European country, the longest run of low inflation for 50 years and the lowest mortgage rates for a generation. Unemployment in Lichfield has fallen by 40 per cent. in the past three years.

Mr. Fabricant: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. Is he aware that businesses in Lichfield are experiencing real problems due to the postal strike? Has


he been deafened, as I have, by the absolute silence from Opposition Front-Bench Members, who have refused to condemn the postal strike? Might that be because the Communications Workers Union has contributed some £250,000 to Labour party coffers?

The Prime Minister: The strikes last week were completely unjustified, and I hope that future plans for industrial action will be called off before more damage is done. My hon. Friend is right to point out that the sponsored silence by Opposition Members continues on this matter. [Interruption.] The deputy leader does not have a sponsored silence this afternoon, nor did he last week when he apparently told his leader to backtrack on what he had said in public—which is no doubt what the right hon. Gentleman was doing when he met the unions yesterday.

Mr. Brian David Jenkins: Can the Prime Minister confirm for the 20,000 residents of Lichfield district who live in my constituency that, under the Tory Government, crime has risen by 147 per cent., education funding from central Government is the lowest in any shire district in England and residential mental health care is being closed for lack of funds? Moreover, when those 20,000 people were given the opportunity to vote in the recent South-East Staffordshire by-election they overwhelmingly turned to new Labour: new life for Britain.

The Prime Minister: I am sorry to hear the hon. Gentleman make that devastating attack on the spending policies of the shadow Chancellor, who has made it perfectly clear that it is not his policy to spend any more money than the present Government. The hon. Gentleman had better discuss his own difficulties with his own Front-Bench spokesmen. As for crime, it is falling throughout the country and has been falling for some time—the first time that that has happened for a long period. No doubt it might have been easier to achieve that if we had occasionally had the support of Opposition parties for the measures that we adopted.

Engagements

Dr. Goodson-Wickes: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 23 July. [36987]

The Prime Minister: This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.

Dr. Goodson-Wickes: Does my right hon. Friend welcome the recent call by the chief executive of the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority for the teaching of modern British history to be reinstated for GCSE? Does he further agree that any open-minded student will come to the conclusion that over the years socialism has done this country a great disservice, and that history would be likely to repeat itself should new Labour ever get the chance to implement new dangers?

The Prime Minister: I certainly agree that young people should have the opportunity to study the history of this country, and I hope that the examination boards will

be aware of the popular concern among many parents on that subject. Whether students study British history or world history, I think that they will see that policies of high regulation, high spending and high taxes have consistently failed, and that, when people are asked to make a choice between a party that believes in low taxes and one that believes in high taxes, they will choose low taxes yet again at the 1997 election.

Mr. Blair: With all due respect to the Prime Minister, I think that people will remember that they were supposed to have chosen low taxes at the last election, but then got the largest peacetime taxes in history. Can the right hon. Gentleman answer the following question with an unequivocal yes? Does he agree with his Chancellor's recent statement that he can see circumstances in which he would recommend that Britain join a single currency during the next Parliament?

The Prime Minister: We have made the position on a single currency entirely clear. I shall make a judgment on what is in this country's national interests, which means that we shall need to know the circumstances of the time, and precisely what a single currency would mean for this country. We need to be engaged in the debate right until its conclusion, whether or not we enter. If we did not enter, a single currency would still have an effect on this country, so it is still important that Britain's voice be heard in the negotiations until they are concluded.

Mr. Blair: Why could the Prime Minister not simply answer yes to my question? After all, I am only asking him to agree with his own Chancellor of the Exchequer. Does not his response show precisely the paralysis of policy? Let me offer him another chance. Can he, like his Chancellor, see circumstances in which he would recommend that Britain join a single currency during the next Parliament—yes or no?

The Prime Minister: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can tell the House whether he agrees with the argumentation in the pamphlet that I have here—a pamphlet produced by Labour Members of Parliament which led to Labour Members squabbling in public this morning and denouncing the shadow Chancellor. I have told the right hon. Gentleman what the Government's position is. We have set it out in a White Paper. That is the position, and it has not changed.

Mr. Blair: The Prime Minister asked me whether I agreed with the pamphlet. The answer is no, I do not agree with it. Now let us have a clear answer from him. What sort of situation are we in when a Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot keep his own Ministers, and the Prime Minister's closest political friends are saying that his party cannot row together or work together? Why should the country put up with another nine months of drift and decay? After six years of that type of weak leadership, are not people entitled to say that enough is enough, and that the only reshuffle that matters will be one that reshuffles the Government out of office and gives the country a fresh start?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman may be prepared to commit himself to decisions without the facts that would affect this country. If he will not commit himself to a decision, he had better make up his mind


whether he is in favour. He won't because he can't, because his party is split from top to bottom on the issue. The reality is that we shall consider the facts—not the prejudices, but the realities—and make a decision on what is right for this country.

Mr. Colvin: Does my right hon. Friend acknowledge that this Michaelmas the Treasury will be receiving around £1.5 billion from the sale of the armed forces married quarters estate? What excuse is there for the Chancellor to delay the essential announcement on the procurement orders which we all expected before the House rose for the summer recess? He cannot have it both ways. First, does my right hon. Friend acknowledge that we have the best armed forces in the world? Secondly, does he agree with our Secretary of State for Defence that they should also be the best equipped?

The Prime Minister: Of course I agree with my hon. Friend about the quality of the armed forces. I also invite him to agree that we have provided the resources to ensure that our armed forces have the best equipment. He will recall the announcement a week or so ago and the £500 million committed. We are evaluating our assessment of the bids for the various pieces of equipment now due for replacement. When that evaluation is completed, but not before, suitable announcements will be made.

Mr. Ashdown: Let me put it to the Prime Minister another way. At the end of a Parliament which began with the farce of devaluation and ended with the fiasco of BSE, which has seen Tory Members leave their party and Tory Ministers desert their Government, and which has gone from cash for questions to cash for dinners in Downing street, is it not time for the Prime Minister to lead his exhausted and divided party out of power to fight their civil wars somewhere else?

The Prime Minister: I think that in his litany the right hon. Gentleman misses some facts of importance to the British people. He cannot recall an occasion in his political lifetime when the British economy has been in such good shape, when inflation has been so low, when unemployment has been falling so well, when growth has been at the top of the European league and investment is coming into this country as it is coming into no other country in Europe. That is happening because of the policies of this Government—policies that his tiny party has objected to throughout this Parliament.

Sir Teddy Taylor: As next Sunday, 28 July, happens to be the 25th anniversary of my resignation from the then Government over their decision to join the EEC, does the Prime Minister accept that there is growing contempt among the voters for people in all parties who pretend that there are any easy answers to the difficult and complex problems of the European Community? Will he think seriously over the summer recess about the possibility of seeking the advice of the voters of Britain as to which way they wish to proceed on Europe? Would not the best answer to the Opposition be to remind them that the country belongs to the people, not to the political parties?

The Prime Minister: There is no doubt from the Opposition's European policies precisely what they would surrender in the European debate. However they try to

hide it, the veto would go and qualified majority voting would increase. They signed up to the socialist manifesto, and the Leader of the Opposition cannot wriggle away from it now. In answer to my hon. Friend's question, of course we shall consider what is in the interests of the United Kingdom. I do that and I shall continue to do that.

Mr. Hain: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 23 July. [36988]

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Hain: Will the Prime Minister rule out any bid from Mr. John Beckwith for the £1.5 billion sale of defence homes and the £750 million sale of benefit offices, in view of his role in organising Premier Club dinners where business men pay £100,000 to bend the Prime Minister's ear? Is there not a clear conflict of interest between being premier of Great Britain and the right hon. Gentleman's position as patron of the Premier Club?

The Prime Minister: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is wrong on all the facts. I saw the story that interested and misled him. No one can buy access to Ministers. [Interruption.] No one is promised favours. [Interruption.] There is one exception in public life: it is possible to buy access to Labour party policy through the trade unions; it is possible to buy votes; it was possible to summon the leader of the Labour party to explain his remarks about the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers last week; it is possible to change Labour party policy, but not ours. As regards Mr. Beckwith, any bid is independently assessed before being approved.

Mr. Nicholas Baker: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 23 July. [36989]

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the answer that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Baker: Will my right hon. Friend condemn from the Dispatch Box the politically motivated strikes by London underground drivers and postal workers? Will he confirm that he has no plans to introduce legislation to give trade unions increased powers or to increase the powers of strikers, which is precisely what is on offer from the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair)?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is right about that. The deputy leader of the Labour party talks about £100,000. Perhaps he will remind the country how much the union that sponsors him pays to the Labour party year after year. Perhaps he will explain that that is why he will not condemn a totally unjustified strike. Perhaps he will explain that not one of the candidates in the shadow Cabinet elections will condemn the strike. If they were standing for election to a Trappist monastery, they could not have been more silent than they have been on the subject of the strike. The right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) knows that the Labour party's relationship with the trade unions is a disgrace to British democracy: they rule, and the Labour party follows.

BILL PRESENTED

RIGHT TO WORK

Sir Ralph Howell, supported by Mr. Frank Field, Mr. David Alton, Sir Wyn Roberts, Mr. David Howell, Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith, Sir Rhodes Boyson, Mr. Michael Alison, Ms Angela Eagle, Sir Anthony Grant, Mr. Hugh Dykes and Mr. Bob Dunn, presented a Bill to establish the right to work and to impose a duty on the Secretary of State to offer work instead of benefit to persons who would otherwise be without work in the United Kingdom; to establish a system of grants to certain parents; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon 15 October and to be printed. [Bill 186]

NORTHERN IRELAND GRAND COMMITTEE

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 99(2) (Matter relating exclusively to Northern Ireland).
That the matter of the 35th, 36th, 37th, 38th and 39th reports from the Examiner of Statutory Rules, being a matter relating exclusively to Northern Ireland, be referred to the Northern Ireland Grand Committee for its consideration.—[Mr. Coe.]

Question agreed to.

Points of Order

Mr. David Clelland: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Yesterday, in reply to a point of order from the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes), you advised him to seek to pursue the question of hon. Members visiting his constituency without his knowledge in another way, rather than by raising it as a point of order.
I took your advice, following a visit last Friday to my constituency by the Minister of State for the Armed Forces and the hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Bates), who were presenting industry awards to a firm in my constituency. Neither hon. Member informed me that he was coming. Their visit was accompanied by much publicity.
I took the matter up with the Ministry of Defence, which informed me that the Minister was not on official business but on a Tory party central office visit. Is it in order for a Minister of the Crown to parade himself around the country, at the behest of central office, giving the impression that he is acting in an official capacity, without informing the Member concerned? That is a double disgrace.

Madam Speaker: My only concern is that a Member or Minister should go to another hon. Member's constituency without the courtesy of giving notice. It is my opinion that the hon. Gentleman should have been given notice of the Member or Minister going to his constituency. That is my responsibility, and I try to uphold it.

Mr. Robert G. Hughes: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. I recall that it is also an important courtesy of the House that, if one hon. Member intends to mention another hon. Member, he should give notice. The hon. Member for Tyne Bridge (Mr. Clelland) did not give me notice, and I suspect that he did not give notice to my hon. Friends the Members for Langbaurgh (Mr. Bates) and for Crawley (Mr. Soames).

Madam Speaker: The point of order did not relate to the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Hughes: rose—

Madam Speaker: Order. It is time that hon. Members took their buckets and spades and went off on holiday, if this is all that they can do.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. You will recall that you signed the Votes and Proceedings of yesterday's business. Item 8 was a Government motion relating to European Community water policy, to which I and two of my hon. Friends moved an amendment that, unusually, was selected—no doubt because it related to the debate Upstairs.
As you will know, under Standing Order No. 102, no debate is allowed on such amendments, even when they are selected. If the amendment had been accepted, it would have had important implications for the European Community and its procedures. Can you tell me whether


representations to change that Standing Order should be made through you to the Procedure Committee, by means of an early-day motion or by letters to the Procedure Committee? There is widespread concern about the way in which we handle these matters.

Mr. Tony Banks: Now that is a point of order.

Madam Speaker: It certainly is a point of order, because the hon. Member for Newham, South knows well our proceedings in the House, follows them carefully and makes proper points of order. I think he is aware—if not, I inform him and the House of this most interesting and important point—that the Procedure Committee is at present examining all these matters. The report will be produced as soon as possible.

Mr. Nigel Waterson: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Could I ask your guidance on a matter of order relating to the subject of the Opposition debate this afternoon? I presume that the subject was originally precipitated by what was thought to be the leak of a Government document. As it now transpires that the leaked document was produced by a Labour prospective candidate, have you had any representations about changing the subject of the debate this afternoon?

Madam Speaker: No, I have not had any such representations. The debate is on the motion as outlined on the Order Paper.

Mr. George Foulkes: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Before we go away with our buckets and spades, is there any way in which we can obtain a statement from the Ministry of Defence about the replacement maritime patrol aircraft? Up to 200 jobs at British Aerospace at Prestwick depend on the decision, and the fear is that it is being delayed to enable the Chancellor to give some pre-election tax cut bribe. That is undermining the position of jobs at Prestwick. Can you force a statement before we go away tomorrow?

Madam Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is well aware that I cannot force the Government to make a statement, but he should also be aware that there will be an opportunity in a debate tomorrow for him to raise the matter and obtain a response. I am sure that, if he looks at tomorrow's Order Paper, he will find a method of doing that.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. For many years, it was the practice in the House not to name civil servants who could not defend themselves on the Floor of the House. While I understand that a determined attempt by the

previous Prime Minister to politicise the civil service has led many civil servants to believe that they have a different role, is it not deplorable that hon. Members should denigrate in the House those who do not have a right to defend themselves?

Madam Speaker: I have always held firmly to the view that those who do not have a platform on which to defend themselves in the House should not be named by hon. Members in that way. I have tried to uphold that principle, and I hope that it will continue.

Sir Patrick Cormack: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. As you have overall responsibility for the papers of the House, could I ask you to be kind enough to speak to those who vet the wording of motions, and ask them to ensure that sloppy phrases such as "knee-jerk opposition" do not occur in official motions again?

Madam Speaker: The point has been taken, Sir Patrick.

Mr. Michael Stephen: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. While I am sure that all of us agree with the general principle that one should not refer to civil servants who do not have a right to defend themselves in the House, surely the action of the Opposition Front-Bench team in bringing the matter before the House has brought it into the public domain?

Madam Speaker: I have made my views known on that.

Several hon. Members: rose—

Madam Speaker: Order. This is like zero hour in India. I do not believe that hon. Members have genuine points of order, but think of them at the last moment.

Mr. Barry Sheerman: On a genuine point of order, Madam Speaker. Many of us tabled questions to the Chancellor for Thursday in good faith, on the understanding that there had been an announcement and there would be business on Thursday. We are suddenly given notice that we are to be deprived of that opportunity to question the Chancellor or to ask him to answer the charges. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Waterson) has just defamed a civil servant, and we now have no opportunity to set the record right. As my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) said, it is a gross discourtesy to the House and to the civil servant.

Madam Speaker: The hon. Gentleman, and perhaps many more like him, will have to wait until October. I hope that he can keep his cool until then.

Waste Prevention

Mr. Gary Waller: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to enable certain local authorities to investigate what measures are needed to reduce, prevent or avoid waste in their area; to take such steps as they consider appropriate in order to achieve that end; and for related purposes.
Reducing waste can make good economic as well as environmental sense, not just for the country, but for industries and individual companies. Nowhere has that imperative been set out more clearly than by my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for the Environment and for Wales in their foreword to the Government's White Paper, "Making Waste Work", a strategy for sustainable waste management, published in December last year. They presented the central message:
more sustainable waste practices need not entail great expense or restrictive legislation. Indeed they can bring substantial savings to business. We can achieve a long-term sustainable balance between the environmental and economic impacts of different waste management options and feel the benefits now.
The theme of the Bill is in tune with that approach, as it certainly does not involve great expense or restrictive legislation. On the contrary, it contains enabling powers that are intended to encourage waste collection authorities to adopt a proactive stance in their dealings with both the domestic and commercial sectors in their areas.
Co-operation between local authorities and local industry is essential. I am in a fortunate position, as a waste minimisation project has been established, which is being led by the Keighley Business Forum. The forum has been described as
a dynamic self-help group of 360 companies whose key aims are to regenerate the local business economy and improve performance.
In March this year, it succeeded with a skills challenge bid for its initial project involving 23 companies, both large and small. The bid won a special merit award as one of the six best schemes in the country.
As the forum points out, individual companies are unlikely to have the management skills, systems, resources or technical knowledge to achieve the full benefits in terms of environmental improvements and energy efficiency savings of waste minimisation. At least a further 40 companies are expected to participate in its forthcoming expanded scheme, demonstrating the keen interest that exists in this field. It has already been found that the cross-fertilisation of ideas and approaches is one of the greatest benefits to be obtained.
The waste saving project managed by the forum has gained the support of the Yorkshire and Humberside Government office, the BOC Foundation, the Environment Agency, Yorkshire Water, Bradford council, and Bradford and district training and enterprise council. It is also linked to Keighley's successful bid for funding from the single regeneration budget, which has the potential to create many new jobs in the town, as well as greatly improving the infrastructure and environment.
In the first phase of the project, a series of nine half-day seminars will take place between September and December this year on a range of different techniques of waste minimisation, including analysing the potential for saving within the production process, better planned maintenance, avoiding unnecessary use of gas and electricity, and taking advantage of opportunities in terms of the recycling and disposal of hard waste, water and effluents.
From that point, with the aid of specialised consultants, companies will be able to carry out waste minimisation audits, and start to formulate their own action plans. For example, Yorkshire Water will be supporting a pilot programme on water minimisation, and will offer a free water audit to companies participating in the scheme.
The initial cost of taking the first steps along the path of eliminating waste need not be great. Companies can participate in the Keighley business forum's project for as little as £60, and there is the possibility of substantial paybacks in due course. However, success demands the continuing commitment of senior management. The forum has stated:
Waste management is not a destination but a journey.
The Government have set out clear objectives: to reduce the amount of waste that society produces, and to make the best possible use of it. In this way, we can minimise the risks of immediate and future environment pollution and harm to human health. Targets can often help, and we have set clear and realistic ones: to reduce the proportion of controlled waste going to landfill from 70 per cent. to 60 per cent. by 2005, and to recover value from 40 per cent. of municipal waste by the same date. The worth of efforts to achieve these targets can be better appreciated if we understand that, in England and in Wales, we produce enough waste to fill Lake Windermere every nine months.
Waste reduction is not something that only concerns companies—it concerns all of us as individuals. The Government, in their 1990 White Paper on the environment, set out a household waste target that involves the recycling or composting of a quarter of all household waste by 2000. Among the key factors in achieving that target is joint action by householders and by local authorities. The latter must ensure that bottle banks are available, and must arrange their waste collection and disposal facilities in such a way that material that can be recycled is separated. Many householders are already used to putting recyclable waste into green bins, the contents of which are collected separately.
The Women's Environmental Network, which is supporting me in the drafting of the Bill, has suggested a number of practical ways in which waste saving can be promoted by local authorities: for example, by publicising cheap repair schemes for household items such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines, which may otherwise, be disposed of if they go wrong; by persuading local restaurants to cut down on the unnecessary waste of food; by discouraging businesses from producing unnecessary publications and paper; and by finding ways of reducing product packaging.
I stress that waste saving makes good sense: it improves the image of companies, it can increase their income, and it gives individuals a stake in an essential drive towards a more sustainable environment. The Bill sends signals that are right for our time, and I hope that it will be supported.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Gary Waller, Sir Teddy Taylor, Mr. Elliot Morley, Mrs. Diana Maddock, Mr. Cynog Dafis, Sir John Hunt, Mrs. Helen Jackson, Sir David Knox, Mrs. Margaret Ewing, Mr. Matthew Taylor and Mr. Barry Sheerman.

WASTE PREVENTION

Mr. Gary Waller accordingly presented a Bill to enable certain local authorities to investigate what measures are needed to reduce, prevent or avoid waste in their area; to take such steps as they consider appropriate in order to achieve that end; and for related purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Tuesday 15 October and to be printed. [Bill 187]

Orders of the Day — Opposition Day

[20TH ALLOTTED DAY]

Welfare State

Madam Speaker: I have selected the amendment standing in the name of the Prime Minister.

Mr. Chris Smith: I beg to move,
That this House asserts its renewed commitment to a strong welfare state to provide a platform of opportunity and security for all citizens during those times of their lives when they need it; expresses alarm at recent indications that Her Majesty's Government is considering the privatisation of parts of the welfare system; deplores the Government's stewardship of the welfare state, which has left it more expensive for the nation but more brutal for those who rely on it; believes that the way to reduce welfare expenditure is to help people to move from benefit to work, not to remove or reduce their benefits; and fears that the future of the nation's welfare state is not safe in this Government's hands.
This debate is taking place because the Government have failed those who depend on the welfare state and the nation. In a world of increasing insecurity, the need for a strong platform on which we can all depend at the times of our life that we need to is greater than ever. We must modernise the welfare state—make it appropriate for a modern world—and we should not dismantle it. That is the crucial difference between the Labour party and the Conservative party.
The Government's stewardship of the welfare state stands on the record. They have doubled the number of people dependent on state benefits, from one in 12 of the population to one in six.

Mr. Michael Stephen: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Smith: So soon?

Mr. Stephen: The hon. Gentleman alleges blithely that we have doubled this and that. Has he not heard that the entire western world has just come through the worst economic recession since 1929, or was that also the fault of the British Government?

Mr. Smith: I notice that the hon. Gentleman and his party are quick to claim credit when the global economy is going well, but rather less quick to claim the blame when it is going badly.
The truth is that twice as many people are dependent on state benefits now as there were when the Government took office in 1979. In addition, they have doubled the amount of means testing in the system: it is up from 16 per cent. of benefit payments to 36 per cent. Now, one in five of all non-pensioner households have no earned income, and that worrying trend—the development of a category of non-earning households—should concern any sensible Government.
As we learned a few moments ago, one in four of all children grow up in poverty, and, at the same time, the budget for social security across the nation has risen by a third in real terms during the time the Government have been in power.

Mr. Nigel Evans: How will the hon. Gentleman benefit the families that have 16 to 18-year-olds in further education when their child benefit is removed?

Mr. Smith: There is no such proposal at the moment, and if the hon. Gentleman listened to what the Labour party has said, rather than paying attention solely to his Conservative central office briefing, he might recognise the truth.
Every year, we have grand announcements from the Secretary of State about claimed reductions in expenditure from the uprating statement, and then, every year, he overshoots his departmental budget, often to the tune of several billions of pounds.
On top of all those examples, we see increasing inequality in this country. The Secretary of State tried to tackle that issue in his speech in Southwark cathedral recently. He told us that people who talked about increasing inequality were missing the real picture, and that we were all upwardly mobile now. He said particularly that those at the bottom of the heap were upwardly mobile now. That assertion stands in the same category as his claim to a number of lobbying organisations some months back that there was no poverty in Britain, because it was a problem only for third-world countries.
The Secretary of State based his evidence on a survey carried out by his Department on the work and earnings experience of men aged 29 to 44 in 1978–79, and their contributions history from then until now.

Mr. David Nicholson: I hope that—in addition to telling us what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in Southwark cathedral—the hon. Gentleman will tell us how the Labour party proposes to reduce social security spending, about which he has complained; how he expects the reduction of means testing, to which he has also referred, to help that process; and how he will pay for the increase in basic pension and the restoration of the link with earnings, as called for by his predecessor as social security spokesman, Baroness Castle. That has been traditional Labour party policy, from which it has resiled.

Mr. Smith: Apart from making the obvious observation that Baroness Castle, dear friend as she is to me, does not make current Labour party policy, the hon. Gentleman might be better off in framing his questions if he reads what we have produced as a party in recent weeks—including, for example, the excellent document entitled "Getting Welfare to Work", which was published some weeks ago. By that means, he might learn something of benefit to him.
In his Southwark cathedral speech, the Secretary of State referred to a departmental survey. That survey excluded women. It excluded also those who were

unemployed at the beginning and at the end of the period covered by it. It focused on a particular generation. The survey gave the lie to the broad conclusions that the Secretary of State tried to build upon it. A passage on the first page of the survey reads:
The findings tell a statistically significant story of the work experiences of a particular group of people, and do not reveal trends in the labour force as a whole.
Yet the Secretary of State attempted to claim in his Southwark cathedral speech that the survey revealed trends in the labour force as a whole.

The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Peter Lilley): The hon. Gentleman has not quoted me. That applies to all his other allegations. He has not presented a single quote to justify them.

Mr. Smith: The right hon. Gentleman said clearly that those of us who have talked about growing poverty and inequality were practising the politics of envy. The tone of his speech was in support of the thesis that inequality does not matter, because it is superseded by mobility. That is what the right hon. Gentleman was saying. If he wants to quibble with my paraphrase of the content of his speech, I am happy to give him the opportunity to do so.

Mr. Lilley: I thought that it would help Hansard readers if I gave them a shorter version of the hon. Gentleman's remarks, and were merely to say that I did not say any such thing.

Mr. Smith: The Secretary of State has shot a hole through the entirety of his speech. He was clearly arguing that the evidence of mobility that his departmental survey showed, as he claimed, made it clear that we did not need to worry about inequality. He is now telling us that that is not what he said. The right hon. Gentleman should go through his speech and withdraw it in its entirety.

Mr. Robert G. Hughes: The hon. Gentleman has no evidence that there is anything like the thought that he suggests is to be found in the speech of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. The hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends—the shadow social security team—have sent out a document to Labour Back-Bench Members for the debate. On the second page, near the top, it states:
The secret report reveals that Ministers intend to justify these cuts in services by arguing that 'some of the customers had brought these problems on their own heads, by failing to take any responsibility for dealing with their own problems'".
There is no quote like that, is there? Will the hon. Gentleman confirm to the House that he has simply made it up?

Mr. Smith: I have a copy of the speech made by the Secretary of State. The right hon. Gentleman said what I claimed he said. I refer to a section that is headed "Opposition Approach". It states:
Indeed, an obsession with equality often displaces concern for poverty by the politics of envy.


That is precisely what I said the Secretary of State was saying. The right hon. Gentleman continued. In another section is headed "Average Incomes Have Risen." He continued by claiming:
Our policies are working. The vast majority of people in this country are better off now than their counterparts were in 1979.
Another section is headed "Improvements for People in the Bottom Tenth of Incomes". It states:
It is significant that claims that the 'poor have got poorer' do not generally focus on benefit levels. Instead they largely relate to statistics for households with the lowest tenth of reported incomes.
He goes on to talk about how people in that decile have seen their position become upwardly mobile. Case after case in the Secretary of State's speech supports the paraphrase that I have just made of it. If the Secretary of State wants to intervene to tell me that he did not say the things in the printed text of his speech, I shall happily allow him to do so.
The Department's survey, which excluded women and people who were unemployed at the beginning of the survey period, does not bear out the construction that the Secretary of State put on it. For example, the survey reveals that more than two thirds of those out of work in 1978–79 were still out of work in 1992–93. It shows that less than half of the lowest paid in 1978–79 had climbed into a higher earnings bracket in 1992–93.
The report is specific about the most recent period, under the present Prime Minister, in relation to people at the bottom of the pile. It says:
Earnings growth over the period varies directly with the decile position, with the highest growth occurring in the upper deciles … What growth there was in the lower deciles occurred mainly in the first two thirds of the period"—
back in the 1980s.
growth in the last third of the period is lower, with no apparent growth at all in the bottom decile".
It is clear from the Department's own study, which the Secretary of State prayed in aid in his speech at Southwark cathedral, that, during the Government's stewardship, the people at the bottom of the pile have seen no apparent growth at all in their incomes and standard of living.
The Government must recognise that inequality and poverty in Britain are real and should not be brushed aside, as they constantly have been by the Government. Not content with having presided over that trend to poverty, inequality and dependency, creating a divided Britain, the Secretary of State is now setting about making it worse.

Mr. Bernard Jenkin: rose—

Mr. Smith: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, but then I must make progress.

Mr. Jenkin: The hon. Gentleman has spent about five minutes attempting to argue that somehow the rich have become richer and the poor poorer. Yet he finished up resting on a phrase tendentiously suggesting that the bottom 10 per cent. are "no better off". That does not mean that they have become dramatically poorer, as the Labour party's propaganda constantly seeks to suggest.

Mr. Smith: First, the phrase that I quoted came from the Secretary of State's own Department's study.

Secondly, as I explained at the outset, that study ignored women and those who were unemployed at the beginning and at the end of the survey, so it was a distorted picture anyway. Thirdly, the Joseph Rowntree Trust's report of a year ago showed clearly that the income, after housing costs, of the bottom tenth of the population had fallen by 17 per cent. during the past 17 years. The hon. Gentleman should look more carefully at the figures before he makes such an intervention.

Mr. Stephen: rose—

Mr. Smith: I shall give way for one last time.

Mr. Stephen: On the subject of distortions. I have in front of me a draft Labour press release which was no doubt left on a photocopier by a prospective Conservative candidate in the hon. Gentleman's office. It says:
Last Wednesday we saw the plans that have been under discussion in the Treasury … It is a nightmare vision of what would happen if the Tories are re-elected. The scrapping of the basic state pension; forcing people to take out private insurance for unemployment or sickness benefit".
Surely it was an act of gross negligence to prepare a press release for Labour Members without checking that it was prepared by one of their own prospective parliamentary candidates. Will the hon. Gentleman assure the House that the text of that press release will be amended to read, "It is a nightmare vision of what would happen if Labour were elected"?

Mr. Smith: I had expected better even of the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. John Denham: I had not.

Mr. Smith: I bow to my hon. Friend's wiser judgment.
The hon. Member for Shoreham must get it right. The lady in question, who has been traduced several times by Conservative Members, is not a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour party, although she is, I understand from press reports, a member of the Labour party, and that should make no difference whatever to her capacity to provide impartial service as a civil servant at the request of her superiors in the Treasury, and to provide that advice, with others, to the permanent secretary at the Treasury, answerable to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is not yet a member of the Labour party.
Not only are the Government presiding over a trend towards poverty, inequality and dependency, but they are setting about making it worse. In the past few days, we have had announcements from the Secretary of State about the ending of the freephone advice service, and the Government are considering ending direct payments to people on income support to cover their gas and electricity bills, which would make budgeting for low-income families much more difficult than it is at the moment.
We have also had further announcements about increasing non-dependant deductions on housing benefit, which will inevitably lead, as the Social Security Advisory Committee has constantly pointed out, to the increasing break-up of families. All of that is on top of the various measures that the Department announced earlier in the year in the uprating statement.
A sensible Government would not go about controlling the social security budget by chopping and slicing people's benefits and removing and reducing the money that people need to survive on and live. A sensible Government would, of course, get people back to work.
Many of the measures that the Government recently announced make the move from benefit to work more difficult rather than easier. The Government propose to cap housing benefit for under-25s at the level of shared accommodation rather than for ordinary property that someone of that age group can rent, and which is available. How will it encourage someone of that age group who is considering taking a risky or possibly temporary job, which may last only six months but will take them off housing benefit for that period, if, when they come back on to benefit at the end, they will be on the lower rate, and so might well face losing not just their job but their home at the same time?

Mr. Lilley: I should have thought it was self-evident, and that is why we introduced it. If people who are unemployed are able to get 100 per cent. of the housing benefit for properties that they would not be able to afford if they were in work, they will be trapped in unemployment. That is why we try to restrict them to housing benefit that is equal to the sort of shared accommodation that most people of that age can afford in work, so that they do not get trapped out of work on benefit, which is what the Labour party wants.

Mr. Smith: It appears that the Secretary of State's solution is to make the trap that he has identified twice as bad. The change that he is making means that someone who takes a temporary job will receive less housing benefit when he or she stops doing the job. Far from relieving people of that trap, the right hon. Gentleman is making the position much worse. The sooner Conservative Members realise that the better.
It is not only the creation of divisions in society and the removal of incentives to work that make the Government's stewardship of the welfare state incompetent; it now seems that their drafting of legislation is also incompetent. The Pensions Act 1995 demonstrates, fundamentally, the way in which the Government get it wrong. I am given to understand that, owing to a technical defect in its drafting, all the orders and regulations made under the Act so far—including commencement orders bringing various parts of it into effect—are legally invalid, and that there is no legal basis for bringing any of it into force, short of a retrospective enabling statute.
The defect is in the commencement section, section 180. As is usual in such cases, it provides for most provisions in the Act to be brought into force by order of the Secretary of State on such days as may be appointed. That is in subsection (1). Section 180 goes on to say that certain specified provisions—not including the section itself—will come into force on the day on which the Act receives the Royal Assent. The usual drafting of a commencement provision of this kind specifically includes the coming into force of the commencement section itself on the day on which the Act is passed. Section 180, therefore, is not one of the sections that came into force on the day of Royal Assent, but it is the only section that contains the power to make the orders necessary to bring the rest of the Act into force.
The only way out of the dilemma, which poses a real problem—it means that the Government cannot implement any of the Pensions Act—is to ensure that powers are validly exercised, and that the Act comes into force, by passing an amending Act declaring that section 180 came into force, and shall be deemed for all purposes to have done so, on Royal Assent. I look forward to hearing that the Government intend to do precisely that. It seems that, even when they are making changes, they do not make them properly and competently.

Mr. Jenkin: Devastating.

Mr. Smith: It is indeed devastating to the implementation of the Pensions Act. If the hon. Gentleman does not understand that, he ought to go back to the Act and read carefully what it actually says and does.

Mr. Jenkin: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Smith: No. I have given way a good deal, and I want to make some progress.
Let me now turn to the issues that have been uppermost in people's minds during the past week. I refer to the signs that are now emerging from the Government and their supporters about a further agenda for wholesale privatisation of key parts of the welfare state.
The first piece of evidence dates from August 1993, when the No Turning Back group published a series of proposals for changes to the benefits system. Its proposals were in three phases—that is important, because much of what it proposed in the first and second phases has already come to pass.

Mr. Jenkin: indicated assent.

Mr. Smith: The hon. Member for Colchester, North (Mr. Jenkin) nods assent. Of course, he was one of the authors of the document.
In the first phase, the group suggested cutting the period of unemployment benefit entitlement from one year to six months, and equalising the state pension age for men and women at 65. Both those suggestions have been implemented. The second phase suggested allowing management buy-outs of jobcentres. The private sector has been invited to run area offices together with the Benefits Agency. The group also suggested market testing of benefits administration. I shall turn shortly to what is happening about child benefit administration.
The first and second phases of the No Turning Back group document have been implemented. The third phase includes a proposal to give people the opportunity to contract out of unemployment and invalidity insurance and out of the basic state pension. The group said that employers should be made to insure employees against industrial injuries. It suggested abolishing mortgage interest tax relief, rent rebates and rent allowances. Given the Government's record in implementing the first two phases, we can only fear their intentions on the third.

Mr. John Sykes: How can we be sure that, in six months, those will not be the policies of the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair)?

Mr. Smith: Those are not the proposals of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield, and will not be—in six months' time or thereafter.
After the No Turning Back group, the next organisation to get in on the act was the Adam Smith Institute. It held a conference early this month which was chaired by the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler), a former Secretary of State for Social Security and was attended by the present Secretary of State to launch its concept of a fortune account. The idea was that it would be an individual insurance account to replace the basic pension and other national insurance benefits.
It is noticeable that the news release that was published by the Adam Smith Institute to coincide with the conference mentions replacing
a state system that is already compulsory but provides poor value for money.

Mr. Jenkin: Hear, hear.

Mr. Smith: The hon. Gentleman says, "Hear, hear," but the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not seem to agree with that proposal. In his speech at the London School of Economics, on 6 February he said:
The social security system has been outstandingly successful in providing an income in those periods of life when people cannot earn because of sickness, disability, unemployment, caring for relatives or old age.
Those are completely contradictory statements. The Adam Smith Institute says that a state system provides poor value for money, and the Chancellor says that the system has been "outstandingly successful." I agree entirely with the Chancellor, who, on this matter at least, has greater validity than the Adam Smith Institute.
Following hard on the heels of the Adam Smith Institute, we had the news that there is a private sector welfare reform group on the go, meeting representatives not of the Department of Social Security but of the Department of Trade and Industry, and involving the heads of a number of Britain's insurance companies. We have no knowledge of what is happening in those meetings or what proposals are coming forward from them, but it would be interesting to know.
We then had the famous "kids in the office". I have no objection to serious, intelligent thinking about the future going on inside Government—heaven knows, it is rare enough under this Government. I have no objection to the use of impartial civil servants who happen to be members of the Labour party. However, the thinking revealed in the memorandum provided to the permanent secretary and generated within the Treasury was certainly not intelligent. I notice that parts of that Treasury memorandum have, even now, not been dismissed by the Chancellor and, indeed, have been supported by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) and the hon. Member for Bridlington (Mr. Townend), who chairs the Back-Bench finance committee of Tory Members.
What of the specific suggestions in the paper? They echo remarkably the proposals made by the No Turning Back group, and include opting out from the basic state pension and the provision of private insurance for unemployment and sickness cover. Do the Government realise how expensive such proposals would be for those who have to take out private insurance, and how much of a sink system would be left for those could not afford or obtain an insurance offer?
Let us take one example of where the full-blown privatisation, which now seems to be under consideration by the Government, fails: that is, in the Government's

drive for personal pensions. We saw an advertising binge some time ago, and misselling that ensured that many hundreds of thousands of people left occupational schemes and took out personal pensions that they would have been better off without. There are still inordinate delays in sorting out the compensation to which they are entitled. Now we see that fees and charges are levied at rates of 25 or 30 per cent. on personal pensions, so that many people see the money they are saving from their hard-earned cash going down the drain.
That does not mean that there should be no private sector involvement, but putting the entire provision out to individual supply by the private sector is not the sensible way forward. There is a world of difference between using the skills of the private sector to improve collective provision and individualising that provision to an entirely commercial transaction. That is the key difference between modernisation of the welfare state and privatisation of the welfare state.
Our proposals for a new framework for second pensions contrast with the Government's hell-for-leather drive for personal pensions, which provide much worse value for money.

Mr. Stephen: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Smith: The hon. Gentleman has already had ample opportunity to intervene.
The same issue can be seen again in the announcements that the Secretary of State made on Friday about the wholesale privatisation of parts of the benefit administration.
Of course there is scope for sensible involvement of private sector expertise in the administration of the benefit system.
On Friday, the Government made three announcements, the third of which is a classic demonstration of how the private sector can sensibly be involved in the administration of the welfare system. The Secretary of State's press release states:
The third initiative is to launch the procurement process for an Information Systems/Information Technology strategy to enable greater sharing of data between benefit systems, working closely with the private sector to provide the most up to date technologies, expertise and funding.
That is entirely sensible, but why on earth are the Government proposing to put the entire administration of child benefit out to the private sector? Is it badly run? Of course it is not.
It is extremely well run, as the letter from the chief executive of the Benefits Agency to staff at the child benefit centre makes clear:
The hard work and commitment of staff in the Child Benefit Centre has been recognised not just within the Agency, with the award of the Benefits Agency Quality Award, but externally too in the achievement of the Charter Mark.
Child benefit is effectively and efficiently administered, as the early-day motion tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead, East (Ms Quin) clearly demonstrates.
What could be the Government's reason for putting it out to the private sector? Perhaps the administration of benefits has been proved to be better run in the private sector. I invite the Secretary of State to look at the


evidence of how the administration of housing benefit in Croydon, Bromley and Wandsworth changed when it was transferred to the private sector.
I also draw attention to the shambles of BET's three-year contract to run the back offices of the Benefits Agency in Lancashire and Cumbria. The consultant's report prepared just a few months ago on the operation of that contract stated:
BET's brief was to handle typing, open the mail, run the messenger service, ensure stationery supplies were up to demand and operate security for the Agency's branches across the region.
The report concluded that the result was disaster:
Benefits Agency staff were left without stationery, and last September BET failed to meet 43 per cent. of the targets set for opening post from claimants.
That is the record of private sector involvement in benefit administration, yet the Secretary of State plans to privatise the most efficient part of the Benefits Agency, supposedly in order to save money and improve efficiency.
I am afraid that it is quite clearly not about improving efficiency, because the system is already efficient. It shows that the Secretary of State is driven not by efficiency, but by dogma. Why does he not turn his attention to the parts of his empire where there are enormous failings in efficiency, such as the administration of the social fund that costs 61 per cent. in administration, or the Child Support Agency, where there is £1 billion of uncollected arrears?
I have two further points about the administration of child benefit. First, confidentiality is enormously important. If confidential information is placed into the hands of private companies, one can never be absolutely certain that it will not leak out.

Mr. Lilley: As the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues have been relying on the leaks of confidential documents by public servants in the public sector, is it not absolutely contemptible for him to suggest that people in the private sector are less to be relied on?

Mr. Smith: I know of no instance in which an official of the Benefits Agency in the child benefit centre has ever revealed the personal details of any customer with whom the centre has had dealings. That is the answer to the Secretary of State's question.
A clear path is being mapped out within the Conservative party's ranks for what it sees as the future of the welfare state. First there was the No Turning Back group, then the Adam Smith Institute, then the welfare reform group meeting with the Department of Trade and Industry. Then came the kids in the office doing work at the behest of the Chancellor and his permanent secretary, and then the Secretary of State himself came out with his announcements last week.
Those are all signs of the direction in which the Government want to head. They herald not the sensible sharing of skills and practice between public and private sector, but a wholesale disposal of segments of the welfare state into private hands—not a modernisation of the welfare state, but a privatisation, not a sensible welfare-to-work strategy, but a chopping away, piece by piece and year by year, of citizens' entitlements.
Government policy represents not an endorsement of the social insurance principle that has rightly underpinned the welfare system since the days of Beveridge and Attlee, but a move towards private individualised insurance cover for some, and poorer provision for the rest. In short, that is not a welfare state that is safe in the Government's hands. It is time for a new Government to take over.

Mr. Jenkin: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Earlier in the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Stephen) referred to a draft core press release issued by the Labour party for use by Labour Members of Parliament. It contains long quotations, seemingly purporting to come from a speech already delivered in this debate in the House of Commons, which it is suggested that Members circulate to their local newspapers.
I draw the matter to your attention, Madam Deputy Speaker, because it is surely a deplorable practice for such a press release to be circulated in draft form in advance of the debate's taking place, and for words to be put into people's mouths that they have not yet uttered in this place.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): I am afraid that that is not a matter for the Chair. The hon. Gentleman may wish to take it up in other ways.

The Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Peter Lilley): I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
'welcomes the substantial progress made by Her Majesty's Government in ensuring that the welfare state continues to be affordable by focusing help on those with genuine need or entitlement; agrees that Her Majesty's Government should continue to seek positive and imaginative ways of ensuring that the welfare state continues to be both effective and affordable; supports Her Majesty's Government in striving to make the administration of the welfare state as effective and efficient as possible; notes that the Labour leadership is now criticised even by its own supporters for being vague and ineffectual on welfare issues; condemns the Labour Party's readiness to criticise people who do think radically about social security; deplores the Labour Party's knee-jerk opposition to the improvement of the benefit delivery system; and opposes the Labour Party's expensive and irresponsible plans for a new means-tested system Pension Entitlement and a flexible decade of retirement.'.
When the Opposition chose this subject for debate, I thought that, from their point of view, they were making a mistake. Now that we have heard the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) make his speech, we know that they were.
The central issue facing every developed country is reform of the welfare state to make it affordable, and the Opposition have demonstrated that they cannot rise to that challenge because they face it like an ostrich, with their head in the sand, rejecting the need for change, along with every positive suggestion for change and all the savings measures that we have adopted. They turn their eyes against any new thinking. Where they do suggest any policies, those are at best woolly and at worst dangerous. I shall actively encourage people who still think that the new Labour party brings no dangers to read the hon. Gentleman's speech, because then they would realise how dangerous Labour would be if it got into office.
The hon. Gentleman rested his basic attack on four planks, all of which have given way. Indeed, most of them gave way before the debate began. First the Opposition tried a spurious attack on the Government's alleged plans to dismantle the welfare state. The first basis of that attack was a condemnation of the measures that I announced to privatise the administration of child benefit.
That turned into something of an own goal. We seek to make savings by improving the administration of the benefits system because we want to maintain the value of benefits. The Opposition are determined to cut benefits and to take child benefit away from more than a million families, because they refuse to face the need to make savings in the administration. They refuse because they are so dominated by the public sector unions that they are committed to a unionised, monopolised state delivery throughout the system.

Mr. Chris Smith: Will the Secretary of State assure us that any savings that he makes by privatising parts of the administration of his Department, rather than going back to the Exchequer, will be used to upgrade and improve benefit levels?

Mr. Lilley: I should have thought that it was self-evident to anyone who takes a serious interest in the welfare state that the pressures for increased spending are such that we have to make the savings if we are to maintain a decent level of provision for people in need—and that is the Government's objective and why we do not flinch from taking difficult decisions. It is clear why the Labour party flinch from doing so.
The second plank of the Opposition attack was the leaked Treasury document, which was alleged to give an insight into Tory thinking, but turned out to give us an insight into the thinking of a wannabe Labour candidate, who claims, incidentally, according to the Daily Express, to be an "adviser" to the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. It would be interesting to know whether the Opposition agree that that civil servant has been an adviser to the shadow Chancellor, or are they casting doubt on her integrity in making that claim in her curriculum vitae?
The third plank was that of the allegedly sinister meetings taking place between leaders of the insurance industry and Government officials in recent months to consider ways to extend private provision in the welfare system. The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury does not seem to be aware that those meetings began not three months ago, as he suggested, but a year ago, when I called together the leaders of the insurance industry to discuss that issue.
Admittedly, the meeting was held privately and in confidence, but because I wanted it to be well informed, I invited the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) and members of the Social Justice Commission. I also invited the former shadow spokesman for social security, the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar), and I am pleased to be able to say that he accepted. Nothing was discussed at subsequent meetings that was not discussed at that excellent conference on the divide between the public and the private sector in the welfare system.
The final plank was the Adam Smith Institute's proposal for a fortune account. It launched that, not at its recent conference, but at the end of last year, when it

published an interesting document developing the idea—on the basis of the Singapore measure—that everyone should have a separate account so that the individual citizen has not just an insurance policy but his or her personal stake in an insurance policy.
When the hon.Member for Islington, South and Finsbury was asked about that subject in a television interview at the turn of the year, he said:
that is certainly one of the models we are looking at very seriously indeed … The beauty of that system is, of course, that it provides the individual citizen with not just an insurance policy but their own personal stake in that insurance policy, which they can use as a financial asset and in many cases they use it, for example, for house purchase in Singapore.
Far from being some madcap idea that I am associated with, it is an idea proposed by the Adam Smith Institute, and the hon. Gentleman has flirted with it, as he has flirted with so many ideas from far afield.
What has become dramatically apparent, not merely from this debate but from all the debates that we have had in recent weeks, is the Opposition's knee-jerk reaction to any plans to save money and target spending better. Since the start of this financial year, the Opposition have opposed or promised to reverse every measure that I have announced or introduced to focus benefit on those in need. Last week, the Opposition said that they would restore benefits to bogus asylum seekers. That would cost a Labour Government the best part of £300 million a year and rising.

Mr. Chris Smith: When did we say that?

Mr. Lilley: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman if he is saying that he is not committed to restoring them. What a moral cripple the hon. Gentleman is. What humbug he has displayed at the Dispatch Box, saying that it was the end of civilisation to withdraw those benefits. He is now casting doubt on a future Labour Government's commitment to restore them.

Mr. Smith: I am glad that the Secretary of State has sat down, because we could do with less childish abuse across the Dispatch Box. We have said clearly that we will speed up the processing of asylum applications and use the money that we save by doing so to restore a proper benefit arrangement for people who are in need and genuinely seeking asylum.

Mr. Lilley: If the availability of those benefits attracts so many people, as it will, that it is impossible to speed the process, as we have found, it will cost what suggested it would, or Labour will leave our present system as it is.
Last week, it was £300 million on asylum seekers. The week before, the Opposition opposed plans to reduce housing benefit to households where someone has gross earnings of more than £200 a week. That would throw away £35 million a year. The same week, they opposed my plans to align increases in allowances for children with the start of the school year. That will save £115 million, and they are throwing it away. The week before that, they opposed plans to reduce benefits for parents who seek to avoid their responsibilities for pursuing child maintenance, which would save £15 million a year.
In June, the Opposition opposed plans to restrict reduced earnings allowance to people of working age, as Parliament had always intended. That would save £30 million a year. They are throwing that away. In May, they opposed plans to align the mobility component of disability living allowance more closely with the care component and with most other benefits that are withdrawn during hospital stays. That is another £40 million that they would throw away. In April, they opposed measures to narrow the gap between benefits for single parents and for two-parent families. Over time, that could save as much as £600 million a year.
In just over four months, the Opposition have rejected well over £1 billion of savings without giving any indication of how they would replace the lost money. On top of that, they reject more than £750 million of efficiency savings from the change programme that I introduced. They have repudiated more than £1.75 billion of savings.

Mr. Paul Flynn: What the Secretary of State refers to as savings is taking money from the pockets of the poorest people in society, including, as we heard, the miners who came here today. He is taking money from the meagre income of disabled pensioners. Is he proud of that?

Mr. Lilley: The hon. Gentleman has a long and proud record of advocating increased expenditure on almost everything, but he is not a Front-Bench spokesman. Labour Front-Bench spokesmen pretend that they would not spend any more on social security but would cut it more effectively than would we.

Mr. Peter L. Pike: While the right hon. Gentleman is on this theme, does he accept that the people in most need, by the Government's criteria are, those who are on income support? Does he agree, that when such people have used the social fund, it is outrageous that more than 40 per cent. of its costs still go on administration? Should we not get more of that money to the people who desperately need help?

Mr. Lilley: That is right. That is why I am seeking through the change programme to streamline all benefit administration and why I thought that it was extraordinary that it was rejected root and branch by the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury. He has continued to object to every concrete measure in the general programme, despite the fact that the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury admitted in a leaked letter that my proposed savings were perfectly feasible.
When it comes down to it, the Government cut administration costs to avoid cutting benefit, and Labour proposes to cut benefits for pupils who stay at school after 16 because it is not prepared to cut administration costs. Labour is not only opposed to all the reforms that I have been introducing recently; it has opposed almost all the changes that I have introduced in this Parliament. It is also committed to increased expenditure. Almost every possible proposal that it has put forward involves increased expenditure, even when dressed up as a savings measure.
Of course, the Opposition are coy about their old pledges. Their document, "Security in Retirement", recently issued by the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury, talks about ensuring
that all pensioners, today and tomorrow, share fairly in the increasing prosperity of the nation".
When they talk privately to the financial press, they say that that does not mean that they are committed to the old link between pensions and earnings. Pensions will be uprated only in line with prices. When they talk privately to their activists, Back Benchers and constituents, they hint that they are committed to expensive increases in pensions after the election.
No wonder sharp-eyed commentators have called for more clarity. Lady Barbara Castle said:
The Labour party's policy statement—Security in Retirement—does not provide a plan of action or detailed and costed proposals about how to achieve adequate pensions … In too many respects the document is ambiguous and inconsistent … Labour must commit itself to the earnings link … But there is no such commitment in the document.
I know that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) will warmly support her campaign to persuade constituency Labour parties to commit the Labour party to that pledge.
Whether or not the Labour party implements its old pledge, it is certainly committed to new, expensive and dangerous pledges. The first is a guaranteed minimum pension. That was proposed by the leader of the Labour party in his party conference speech last October. He made it a defining characteristic of new Labour, and said:
The aim of our policy is to guarantee a minimum income that provides dignity in old age. That is New Labour.
Of course, we already guarantee a minimum income of more than £100 for a couple via income support. If Labour's minimum pension guarantee were only 10 per cent. higher, it would cost £3 billion a year, discourage saving and extend means testing. As Lady Castle and Peter Townsend pithily put it:
It is difficult to see how in practice the Minimum Pension Guarantee would differ from Income Support … it is the same old hated and unworkable means test in disguise.

Mr. Bernard Jenkin: My right hon. Friend missed one element of the equation. If many more people were put on to means testing, by the measure that the Opposition tend to use, many more people would be in "poverty". The system they advocate undermines the statistical basis on which they attack the Government.

Mr. Lilley: My hon. Friend is right. The Opposition are being hoist by their own petard. As they refuse to make any savings on administration, they would probably have to cut benefits elsewhere and doubtless, on the same measure, claim that they were reducing poverty.
The other main Opposition proposal is to introduce a flexible decade of retirement, allowing people to draw their pension at the age of 60 instead of 65. People can already defer taking their pensions and be rewarded by a 7 per cent. increase for every year that they defer. However, 90 per cent. of people take their pensions at the first opportunity. If they continue to do so under Labour's proposal, it would cost £15 billion a year extra. The hon. Member for Islington, South and


Finsbury put out a press release to criticise me when I last pointed out that his document says that that will be done only in a way that will mean no extra cost to the Treasury. The only way that the right to a pension can be extended by five years with no extra burden to the Treasury is by reducing the value of the pension. I will happily give way to Opposition spokesmen if they can suggest one.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Use the same formula that was introduced by the Government most recently for Ministers and Members of Parliament.

Mr. Lilley: Unfortunately, that was not costless to the Treasury, which is why the Government opposed it. I would still be happy to give way to the Opposition's pensions spokesmen so that they can tell us, in qualitative terms, how they can make the flexible decade of retirement no extra burden on the Treasury without cutting the basic rate of pension. It cannot be done, and the Opposition ought to realise it.
My ultimate objective is an affordable welfare state which provides decent benefits to those who need them and are genuinely entitled to them. Therefore, my first objective is to save money without affecting benefit levels. That means cracking down on fraud and streamlining administration. Most organisations in the private sector have achieved dramatic improvements in efficiency. I believe that we can do likewise, especially if we learn from and, where appropriate, work with the private sector. That is why I launched my change programme, which aims to achieve a 25 per cent. increase in efficiency. That means savings worth £0.75 billion.
The hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury condemned my programme as damaging, dangerous and impossible when I announced it. His colleague the shadow Chief Secretary concluded that it was perfectly feasible. None the less, he has continued to attack each concrete step forward that I have announced. Indeed, he declared on the "Today" programme that he has an "ideological" objection—I use his word—to private participation in the administration of benefits. That would seem to mean that Labour would not continue to use the 19,000 sub-post offices, all of them private, to deliver benefits. I take it that it is not Labour's intention to nationalise them.
If not, how does the hon. Gentleman reconcile the continued use of a private sector delivery mechanism with his ideological objection to the private sector playing any part in the administration of the core benefits provided by the Department? The fact that the hon. Gentleman says mutually contradictory things on odd and even days of the week does not help the House elucidate exactly what he is committed to.
My second objective in reforming the welfare state has been to focus benefits on genuine need. Savings from my reforms will reach £5 billion a year in the next Parliament and £15 billion a year thereafter. The Opposition have opposed them all. They have not told us where they would get the extra money, so they start off that far behind, with that obligation to raise taxes. Finally, it is essential to encourage self-provision. We believe in a welfare society in which both the state and the private sector play full roles.
The role of the private sector is already enormous. Eighty-five per cent. of employers run their own sick pay schemes. Fifteen million households, that is two thirds, have life assurance, and 1.3 million people have permanent health policies. We have friendly societies with 8 million members which manage funds worth about £3.25 billion. The proportion of people who have insured their mortgages against periods of sickness or unemployment is rising sharply.
All that private provision is capped by the enormous private pension provision in Britain, which has enabled us to build up some £600 billion of pension funds to pay for future pensions. That is not only more than any other country on the continent has built up in similar funds, but more than all the other countries of the European Community put together have bothered to save and invest to meet the growing number of pensioners in the years to come.

Mr. Stephen: Is it correct that the unfunded liability of Germany will be equal to its gross national product by 2030? By contrast, have not we in Britain built up a vast fund—my right hon. Friend tells us that it is £600 billion—which not only will provide security for people in their old age but provides an enormous fund for investment in British productive industry?

Mr. Lilley: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is the case. It is something in which we take great pride and on which we have been determined to build by introducing measures to encourage further growth of occupational and personal pension schemes. If they did not exist, and if none of the private provision that I mentioned earlier did not exist, we would have to pay out some further £25 billion a year to take over on behalf of the state what is currently provided by the private sector. That would increase the state's budget by about a third.
So it is absurd to take the "ideological" position—I use the word of the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury—of hostility to the development of private provision not only for administration but for general provision of insurance and saving products to allow people to boost their position in times of need.
The Labour party has finally destroyed any claim it ever had to be able to reform the welfare state. It has set itself rigidly against any serious change or reform. It opposes every savings measure. It is opposed even to making savings on running costs. It is opposed to sensible private sector involvement even where it will give value for money. It repudiates any expansion of private sector provision of benefits. The reason why it does so is clear—a mixture of ideological hostility to the private sector and subservience to the public sector unions which insist on monopoly state provision, and which, of course, sponsor so many Front-Bench Opposition Members.
As I said at the beginning of my speech, welfare reform is the key issue worldwide. We are leading Europe in sensible and imaginative reforms. I believe that welfare reform will be a key issue at the next election. The voters will utterly reject the Labour party's ostrich-like approach to the issue and endorse our sensible steady, caring and effective approach.

Mr. David Winnick: When the Secretary of State talks about reform of the welfare state, he means substantial undermining of the welfare state. That is how he conceives reform. However, he was right in one thing. He said that the matter would be decided at the general election. Indeed it will—the sooner the better.
It is always useful when we have such debates to recognise that there is a fundamental difference between the Government and the Opposition on state provision in welfare and related matters. The Secretary of State nods in approval. At one time, the situation was different. In the early post-war years, when the Labour Government built up the welfare state—one of the greatest blessings that this country has known—the Conservative party took a different view. It took the view that, if it was to win back and hold on to office, it had to accept what had been legislated for between 1945 and 1951. For some years in government, the Tories more or less accepted the welfare provisions. That changed about 30 years ago.
The Tory party has been under mounting pressure from right-wing think tanks to do away with a great deal of what was achieved by the Labour Government in the early post-war years. For example, in 1990, before the Secretary of State occupied his present position, what I describe as the wrongly named Adam Smith Institute argued in a pamphlet that unemployment benefit should be privatised. That led to quite a row in the House at Social Security Question Time on 2 July that year.
A pamphlet, with which the Secretary of State perhaps privately agrees, argued that unemployment benefit should be a matter for the private sector, not the state sector, and that sudden increases in unemployment, which would be a burden on the private sector, could be dealt with by not paying unemployment benefit in the first few weeks. That was suggested as one way of saving money.
The pamphlet also said that people should be able to tide themselves over short periods. When people with family responsibilities and the rest of it, including my constituents, lose their jobs, few of them are in a position to tide themselves over until they can find another job without unemployment benefit and, where appropriate, income support. Bearing in mind the low pay that so many people receive in this country, that is hardly surprising. The people who write such pamphlets live in a different world. They do not live in the real world that we know about and a large majority of our constituents have to endure.
It is interesting that the pamphlet six years ago said that unemployment benefit should be paid for less than 12 months. I am sure that those who were responsible for the pamphlet will be pleased that the Tory Government have implemented that aspect of it by introducing the jobseeker's allowance, an entirely unjustified measure to reduce unemployment benefit from 12 to six months. When the constituents of Conservative Members become unemployed, I wonder how many of them will applaud what the Government have done with the jobseeker's allowance.

Mr. Sykes: Why can the hon. Gentleman not persuade Opposition Front Benchers to promise to reverse the measure?

Mr. Winnick: The question comes from two quarters. Tory Members want us to make commitments so that they

can then ask where we shall get the money to pay for them—of course they will. Likewise, somewhat to my surprise, the Liberal spokesperson, the hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne), made the same point. If the Liberals stood a chance of forming the Government, they would understand the position, which my hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench already understand.
The state pension is vital for millions of people: it is not some sort of extra, but the core amount for millions of people who retire. If there is any dispute about that, I refer the House to a parliamentary reply about the state pension that was recently given by the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, the hon. Member for North Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), on 11 July. Anyone who suggests that the pension does not amount to a large proportion of a retired person's income should consider that written answer. It said that 72 per cent. of pensioner households relied on the state pension for 50 per cent. of their income—quite a large amount—and 51 per cent. of pensioner households in the country relied on a state pension for 75 per cent. of their income.

Mr. Nigel Evans: Why should we take lessons from a Member of Parliament whose party twice stopped the Christmas bonus for old-age pensioners?

Mr. Winnick: It is rather an impertinence—

Mr. Sykes: Apologise.

Mr. Evans: Apologise.

Mr. Winnick: If there are any apologies to be made, they should come from the Conservative Government who, in 1980—I was in the House when it happened—decided that they would no longer increase the pension in line with earnings, and pensioners lost out. Before I am asked again the inane question why the Labour party does not make a commitment, I can say that I have already given my response.
The Labour Front-Bench team recognises that, when there is a Labour Government, Labour Members will use every opportunity to try to see to it that pensioners' income is substantially increased whenever possible. I do not notice any pressure being exerted by Tory Members on Ministers to increase the state pension other than in line with inflation. That is an important difference which the country recognises: the commitment of Labour Members to improve the living standards of those who have retired.
I do not accept that the private sector can provide adequate pensions for the large number of pensioners. In his concluding remarks, the Secretary of State paid lip service to the private sector and all that it can do. It cannot provide anywhere near adequate pensions for the large number of people on low pay—I am talking not about 100,000 or 500,000 people but about millions of people.
I do not believe that the private sector is interested in such people. The private sector cannot provide pensions for those people who are often in and out of work through no fault of their own or for the long-term unemployed. Ministers and Tory Members refuse to recognise that, time and again, it is the state that provides the core support that people would not otherwise have. That is why the Labour party is committed to building up the welfare state, and that is why reforms have been carried out by successive Labour Governments.
Many people were actively encouraged to opt out of the state earnings-related pension scheme and to take up personal pension schemes—we know what has happened to a large number of those schemes. Many Conservative Members would not, on reflection, try to defend or justify such schemes—I leave aside pension swindles and the other matters that we know about.
I want the state pension to be improved. I hope that it will be possible for the Labour Government to do so in the way previously undertaken. I understand the difficulties and I shall not say from the Back Benches what I would not be able to say from the Front Bench. To make commitments at this stage would only play into the hands of the present Government.
We owe a responsibility to the retired population and to all those people who have had difficulties in the past, certainly before the second world war, in finding work. We have a commitment as well to those who worked in the post-war years, believing that, when they retired, they would have an adequate pension on which to live.
I sometimes get the impression that Conservatives believe that it is undignified to rely on the state, and that one should always have one's own private means. I shall relate a personal experience, when I felt no loss of dignity when I had to rely on the state. As some of my hon. Friends know, I was recently in hospital and, having paid my insurance contributions all my employed life, I felt no indignity when I relied on the hospital and the medical staff—I relied on them for my life. I was very pleased at what the medical staff were able to do when it came to my NHS operation, which I hope will have lasting effects. I felt no indignity because I did not reach for my chequebook; I had paid already and will continue to pay through my national insurance contributions, as I am fortunate enough to earn my living—many people in this country are denied that opportunity.
That episode illustrates the welfare state. Unlike other countries such as the United States where there are private insurance schemes—many of which are inadequate—in this country, when I required state help, it was there. Conservative Members will probably say that the NHS continues. I know that the Secretary of State does not have direct responsibility for the NHS, but he is a member of the Cabinet.
One of the lessons that. I learned—if I needed to—from first-hand experience during my first two days in hospital earlier this year involved the tremendous financial pressures under which the hospital operated. There had to be negotiations between hospitals when patients needing needed to be operated on, which was not dignified—I shall use the word, as I have used it earlier—for the surgeons and others involved. We should have no complacency about what has happened to the NHS in the past 17 years.
The Treasury leaked document gives a good sign of what the Government are thinking. It shows that civil servants respond to the Government; they do not respond to this Government by writing a report on how to restore full employment or how to restore adequate state provision. The leaked document, whether the work of Treasury kids or others, is genuine—the Secretary of State would not wish to deny it—and is based on Government thinking. It is the duty and responsibility of civil servants to act accordingly and to place on paper the options that are open to the Government. given their political line
The welfare state, which I described earlier as one of this country's great blessings, has undoubtedly been undermined. The NHS has been undermined; pensions have been undermined. People's security has been undermined—the security people felt because, when, in their old age, they were no longer able to look after themselves, they would be able to go to a local authority home. We know that that no longer happens in most instances—increasingly, one has to pay for oneself. If someone does not have a spouse and is an owner-occupier, his house will be sold from under him.

Mr. Stephen: How can the hon. Gentleman say with a straight face that the NHS has been undermined, when he knows perfectly well that it now treats more patients to a higher standard than ever before in this nation's history?

Mr. Winnick: The hon. Gentleman is not facing reality—he should visit a number of hospitals. Drawing on my experience, I told the Secretary of State about the pressure on hospitals; I should add that there is now even greater pressure as a result of the changes that have been made in the past two or three years. If the hon. Gentleman does not accept my word, I suggest that he talk to some of the doctors, surgeons and nurses in the national health service, who will confirm what I have said.

Mr. Sykes: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Winnick: No. I wish to conclude my speech.
The Government have undermined the welfare state in all the areas that I have mentioned—including through the jobseekers' allowance, reduced housing benefits and much-increased prescription charges. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) referred to the leaked document and to related matters. In every constituency, especially in marginal constituencies, we have to get the point across in relation to what a re-elected Tory Government would do.
We should have a general election now. If what I am saying is not true, why are the Government terrified? Why are they not calling an election until the last possible moment? They know what would happen if there were a general election now, which is why they are holding on. The Government know that people accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury, other Labour Members and I have been saying: the welfare state is being eroded and undermined because the Government have no serious commitment to it. When Labour is in office, we will try to help in every way we can the people who elect us to the House of Commons. We have a duty and a responsibility to the ordinary people of our country. A Labour Government will carry out their responsibilities accordingly.

Mr. Peter Ainsworth: I congratulate the Opposition on choosing this important subject for today's debate. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security has said, this is one of the most important topics with which Governments in the developed world are grappling—they are wrestling with the cost of providing welfare against a background of demographics that involves fewer people providing for more people.


This is an international trend and it is facing every single Government. It is right for the Labour party to bring this subject before the House.

Mr. Sykes: Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the hospital that treated the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), as it obviously did a good job? However, will he remind hon. Members that it was not that long ago—perhaps 1978 or 1979—that members of the Confederation of Health Service Employees and other unions were picketing the hospitals?

Mr. Ainsworth: Yes, I remember those dark and terrible days. The hon. Member for Walsall, North seems to be in sparkling form, but, alas, his hospital treatment seems to have done nothing to improve his judgment.
It is important to put any debate on welfare in its proper context. Any welfare state depends on the wealth creators in society. If we impede their ability to prosper—if we hinder their enterprise by excessive regulation, by state interference or by bureaucracy, or if we tax them too highly—they will suffer, as will the most vulnerable people in society who depend on the whole process of wealth creation. The ability of the state to provide depends on the ability of individuals to prosper.
I ask one key question about the welfare state in Britain: is it working? I understand that, since 1949, spending on welfare in this country has increased by 5 per cent. over and above inflation every year—in fact, it has grown by double the rate of the national economy. This has created an enormous burden for this generation and for future generations of taxpayers. The welfare budget is currently costing the average working person £75 a week. Therefore, one would expect the problems that the welfare state was set up to tackle too have been eliminated—but that is far from the case. Despite the excellent efforts of my right hon. Friend to rein back future growth expenditure, the overall rate of expenditure on welfare is projected to increase. It is quite clear from that fact alone that the welfare state is not working as it should be or as was intended.
Any civilised society that can afford to do so should establish the sort of safety net that Beveridge intended when he established the welfare state. There should be a set of basic provisions to protect the poor, the disabled, the vulnerable and the weak in society. Is it right that the welfare industry should stretch so far beyond that? Is it not the case that, to the extent that the state acts as a surrogate for individual responsibility, it diminishes individuals? It closes off options, it increases dependency and, eventually, it undermines humanity's basic right to choice.
The arguments for reducing the scope of the welfare state, for encouraging greater self-reliance, greater individual and family responsibility, are not only economic—important though the economic arguments are—but moral. Some hon. Members thought that the Labour party had grasped this essential point—the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) appears to have grasped it, and he speaks with great authority on the subject of welfare and social services. If he had not grasped that point, he would not be leading his Social Services Committee on a delegation to Chile in September

to learn the lessons of the most privatised pensions system in the world. He is at least prepared to explore alternatives and to think radically about these important issues. I think that some of this radicalism lay behind the thinking of the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) when he instructed the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) to go out and think the unthinkable.
I fear that very little progress has been made, and I am depressed. It seems to me that one of the things that is unthinkable about the current welfare state is that it should continue as it has over the years—that it should get more and more expensive and not solve the fundamental problems that it was set up to tackle. In so far as Labour policy appears simply to advocate a further increase in spending and more of the same, that is certainly thinking the unthinkable. The Labour party's proposals, such as are visible, increase spending dramatically and do nothing to lessen dependency.
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, the guaranteed minimum income for pensioners—if set at 10 per cent. above income support—would cost no less than £3 billion more than it currently does. In addition, it would bring more pensioners on to income support, increase costs and increase dependency. The flexible decade of retirement would cost another £15 billion a year, or there would be much lower state pensions.
Far from thinking the unthinkable in the terms that the Leader of the Opposition had in mind, the Labour party is committed to doing away with the excellent reforms that my right hon. Friend has been working on. They are aimed at reducing the cost of welfare and at targeting those in real need. As my right hon. Friend said, they amount to around £5 billion of savings in this Parliament. We are already up to £20 billion on Labour's spending plans but, oddly, we hear of absolutely no plans to increase taxation. I simply do not understand how the Opposition have the gall to come forward with proposals that will cost billions of pounds and not tell a soul how they will fund their proposals.
I began by congratulating the Opposition on choosing this important subject for debate and, as we have heard, they obviously prepared their ground carefully. I suspect that they were inspired to choose the subject by the so-called leaked Treasury document about which we have heard so much. My hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Stephen), among others, has drawn attention to the extraordinary draft press release that seems to have found its way into the wrong hands. It is entitled "Tories Set to Dismantle the Welfare State". It states:
Speaking on the day the House of Commons debates the future of the welfare state"—
blank—
MP for"—
blank—
spelt out today his/her fears about secret Tory plans to dismantle the welfare system on which we all depend.
Last Wednesday we saw the plans that have been under discussion in the Treasury," said"—
blank—
"It is a nightmare vision".
So it continues.
Oh dear. It turns out that the author of the Treasury document was one Helen Goodman, a Labour party activist who is seeking selection in a safe seat in the north


of England. When the subject was raised earlier, the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury leapt to her defence and said that everything was all right because she was an unsuccessful Labour party activist who had not been chosen for the safe seat of Barnsley, East. That will not wash.

Mr. Chris Smith: Is the hon. Gentleman seeking to imply that Helen Goodman is not capable of showing due impartiality in her duties as a civil servant? If he is, he is traducing her reputation as a professional civil servant.

Mr. Ainsworth: The hon. Gentleman would do better to address his question to "blank", Member of Parliament for "blank".
The right hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) has said of the work by that Labour party activist that it
provides an insight into a Tory fifth term that would be not just a lurch, but a stampede to the right.
The issue has more to do with the debate between new Labour and old Labour than with the Conservative Government's policy. The lady in question—perhaps because of her embarrassment—seems, properly, not too keen to own up to being a Labour party activist. When she was asked by The Sunday Times whether she was seeking to be a Labour party candidate, she replied evasively several times and finally said:
No, I am four months pregnant.
Since when was being four months pregnant an effective bar on becoming a Labour party candidate? That is not very new Labour.

Mr. Nigel Evans: New Labour, new labour.

Mr. Ainsworth: I shall resist the temptation to make an inappropriate and politically incorrect jest. The lady was at least thinking the unthinkable in the way that the Leader of the Opposition had in mind, and perhaps that is why she was unsuccessful in her bid for a parliamentary career.
We must continue to work to reduce the welfare bill. It is too high and it is unsustainable. We must work to continue to make welfare and benefits more effective where they are most needed. We can do that by focusing on those who are in real need, by encouraging personal responsibility and by improving incentives to work and to save. The Opposition will do none of that, partly, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, because they are too dependent on the public sector unions to get away from the old ways of state provision for everybody and partly too, I suspect, because in many areas they have a vested interest in the dependency cycle and in the votes that come from dependency.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is making excellent progress in delivering a more effective and cost-efficient welfare state. I urge him to continue with his work, because there is much more to do.

Ms Liz Lynne: Whenever we talk about the future of the welfare state, value for money is hardly ever mentioned and it has not really been mentioned in the debate today. We have heard a lot about the total cost of the welfare budget, but nothing about what it buys or provides for people.
We have heard so much talk about private provision, but quite apart from the fact that the weakest will fall through the net if we change to private provision, we should consider the cost to the individual. If people have to buy private provision, their bills at the end of the week or month will be far greater than under the welfare state run by the Government. I know that the Government want to cut back on the welfare bill so that they can offer tax cuts before the next election. That is fine, but they should be honest and say how much a change to private provision would cost a family at the end of the month.
Let us take the example of health provision. In America now, people get a lesser service and have to spend more on it. Many Americans find it difficult to manage, but still people say that private provision is the best way forward for welfare benefit. Surely the basic principle of insurance is to spread the cost, and how better to spread the cost than through a Government-run scheme?
The next problem, if we introduced private provision, would be the social consequences. Anyone who thinks that private provision can replace the welfare state should consider the joint study published by the Disability Alliance and the Disablement Income Group entitled "There May Be Trouble Ahead". The report's conclusion is that occupational pensions and health insurance are no substitute for a state disability income scheme, especially for the most vulnerable in society.
Occupational pensions have their place—I do not dispute that—but that place is as an addition to the basic state pension. We believe that income support should be replaced by a top-up to the basic state pension, with occupational pensions in addition, not as a replacement for the current provision.
Other bodies are saying that private provision will not work. The 1994 report by the Social Security Advisory Committee suggested that those most at risk would get either inadequate cover or none at all. The report states:
Unless the insurance industry produced a package which, in effect, replicated the wide coverage of risks accepted by the state scheme, we see little prospect of a greater involvement of the private sector in provision for sickness, disability and unemployment in such a way that it would supplant state provision for the majority of the population and for high risk vulnerable groups in particular.
So many people have said in the media and in the House that a demographic time bomb is ready to explode because of our aging population, but the reality is slightly different. The Department of Social Security's own statistics show that 15 per cent. of the population were over 65 in 1990 but that 14 per cent. would be over 65 in 2000—a decrease of 1 percentage point. The figure is projected to rise to 16 per cent. by 2020; that is worrying, but it is far from alarming.
Hon. Members may claim that the problem will be the proportion represented by the work force as compared with retired people, but that figure is not so bad as we have been led to believe by all the people in the media and the politicians who have gone on television talking about a demographic time bomb. There will not be a sizeable increase until the year 2020. After that, however, the increase will be substantial.
I accept that there is a problem, but it will not begin to bite for another 24 years. That being so, we should plan rather than panic. Unfortunately, however, people are panicking about the budget for the welfare state. Some are running from one television studio to another. Many


commentators are saying that we face a crisis and others are writing to that effect in the press. But we are not at that stage. The problem will not be reached until 24 years have passed, when there will be more people of pensionable age than of working age.
We must defend the basic principle of the welfare state. At the same time, we must make the system more efficient and effective. We must have a war on waste, and one consideration should be benefit overpayments. We know that income support overpayments amounted to £546 million last year alone, mainly due to official error. The Government must recognise that problem. There are all the other benefit overpayments. We must cut overpayments and benefit fraud, and I welcome some of the measures that the Government are taking to reduce benefit fraud.
We must also have a proper back-to-work strategy. Some politicians say that such a policy would slash the social security budget, but they seem to forget that more than half that budget is directed to pensioners, so there would not be the dramatic slash that some envisage. At the same time, we must not lose sight of the need to get people back into work.
It will not be an easy task to return people to work. No one in any political party argues to the contrary. There will be no real savings in the short term because child care and proper training cost a great deal of money, but a policy to return people to work will be a good investment for the future, and we must look to the future—especially to the year 2020. Investment must take place now to ensure that we can afford our pensions bill and the welfare state generally in the future.
One way of getting people back to work cheaply is the benefit transfer scheme whereby employers are paid the benefits that would otherwise go to keeping someone unemployed. Another approach is to merge income support and family credit so that people are always better off in work. The family credit taper could operate with one merged low-income benefit.
We must help disabled people into work. Many say that that is not a priority, but I believe that it is. We greatly need a civil rights for disabled persons Bill, and Liberal Democrats are committed to that. We must ensure that we get disabled people into work. It would also cut the benefits bill. It makes sense to help disabled people with transport and other access problems.
Child benefit must be protected. The Labour party is desperately wrong in proposing to cut child benefit for 16 to 18-year-olds. That will not encourage young people to stay on at school. The key feature of the benefit is that it is received by the mother. How are poorer families to support a young person at school? How will they support their children by providing food and clothes? The bills are enormous.
The Government are also wrong to have in mind privatising the delivery of child benefit. Are we at the start of the slippery slope? Are the Government starting with child benefit because it is fairly easy, but with the intention of moving on to other benefits thereafter? Are they saying that Government Departments cannot run the system well and cheaply? Are they saying that the private sector can run it more cheaply, notwithstanding profit

margins? It seems strange that the Department of Social Security does not have its own house in order. I am also worried about the confidentiality of records.
We need definite assurances that those on low pay will continue to be paid child benefit on a weekly basis if that is their preference. I have heard rumours that it is to be paid straight into bank accounts. The Government must understand that many people still do not have bank accounts. People should not be excluded from child benefit because they do not have a bank account. Similarly, it should not be made more difficult for them to receive it: they should not have to run around trying to open an account.
The Government and the Labour party are so keen to cut costs and to save money for the Treasury that they forget the bills that a household faces at the end of the week. They also forget that our welfare state works well—extremely well for some people, including some who are disabled. I strongly believe that the welfare state is under threat from the Government and from those on the Opposition Front Bench. All of us in the House who are like-minded must fight to save the welfare state.

Mr. Michael Stephen: It is characteristic of new Labour, as it was of old Labour, to make wild and unsubstantiated allegations. We heard the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), who has since left his place, allege that the Conservative party is undermining the national health service. I challenged him by pointing out that the NHS now treats more patients to higher standards than ever before. The hon. Gentleman could not deny that.
Likewise, the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) said in his opening speech that the Government are dismantling the welfare state. What nonsense that is. Are the Government really dismantling a welfare state on which they spend £90 billion a year? That is more than a third of all Government spending—spending which costs every working person in the land £15 every working day. How can that level of expenditure possibly show that the Government do not care about the welfare state?
What do the Opposition want us to spend? Do they want us to spend 100 per cent. of the gross national product on the welfare state? If not, how much do they want us to spend? When it comes to spending, Labour is coy: whenever we challenge Labour Members to say how much tax they would levy and how much public expenditure there would be under a Labour Government, they say, "We are having a review." They have had 17 years to have a review. Is it not about time they came to some conclusions?
We on the Conservative side accept the responsibility of the welfare state. We accept that, through no fault of their own, there will always be people in our society who need the help of the rest of us as taxpayers. We are committed to providing that support, but we are certainly not committed to providing support for scroungers and fraudsters. Nor are we committed to providing support for those who work in the administration of the benefit system just because they are employed there: the benefits system exists to deliver benefits in the most cost-effective way, not just to employ people.
We on the Conservative side accept responsibility to those less fortunate, and that is why we have increased taxes. It is much to our electoral disadvantage to increase


taxes, but we had to do so because the alternative was to cut spending on pensions, hospitals, schools and the welfare state. Those vital services had to be maintained by the Government, and they were.
We have also had to increase borrowing. We did it much against our will, and again much to our electoral disadvantage, but we did it because we accept our responsibility to those less fortunate.

Mr. William O'Brien: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will take into consideration the £17.5 billion that the Government wasted on the poll tax, which failed after one year. What does he say about that waste of money, which was the result of the dogma of the then Prime Minister?

Mr. Stephen: I do not want to dispute figures with the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps we can check them later. However, whether they are true or not, I entirely agree with him that any waste and any inefficiency is to be deplored. There will be mistakes, of course. Mistakes have been made by Labour Governments and by the present Government. I do not say that the Government are infallible. Unfortunately, at the moment the public are inclined to compare the Government with a party of paragons which never makes a mistake, when what they should be doing is comparing the Government with the real Labour alternative.
Private provision has been talked about a great deal and it has its place. Private pension provision has been an enormous success. It has built up a fund of £600 billion to provide security for people in their old age and an enormous fund for investment in British industry. The Government have helped people to make that provision for themselves by giving generous tax relief.
Private provision, whether for pensions, unemployment benefit or hospital care, is only for those who can afford such provision. I and all my right hon. and hon. Friends accept that there will always be people who cannot afford that, and we accept our responsibility for ensuring that they are looked after.
It lies ill in the mouth of the Opposition to complain about the administration of the benefit system when, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) said earlier, it was the Labour party that so mismanaged the economy that it could not even pay the £10 Christmas bonus. Meagre as it was, they could not pay it. The Opposition talk about how well they will look after pensioners, but when they are put to the test, they fail, as they have failed in almost every area of policy.
The Opposition talk about the number of people on benefit and allege that the Government have doubled the number. They have forgotten about the recession which laid waste the economies of France, Germany, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and others, and when they do not forget about it, they blame it on the British Government. That is nonsense.
The Opposition have also forgotten about technology. I am sure that Opposition Members will have visited factories in their constituencies. Five years ago they would have seen people bent over the workbench. Today, the factories in my constituency and theirs have hardly anyone in them. Rows and rows of robot machines are tended by a few people in white coats. Technology has destroyed a whole range of jobs which existed five or 10 years ago.
The Government have had to pull Britain not only through the worst economic recession since 1929 but through the second industrial revolution. That we have managed to do that without cutting spending on the national health service but increasing it, without cutting spending on schools but increasing it, without cutting pensions but raising them year upon year, in the light of those two factors of world importance, shows that the Government have got it right.
We are accused of leaving children in poverty. Opposition Members may not realise this, but the main cause of child poverty is marriage break-up. Marriage break-up is a phenomenon of our time that we all deplore, but to lay that at the Government's feet is fatuous. The Opposition talk about children in poverty in the same breath as their policy, which from time to time they deny, to deprive 16 to 18-year-olds of child benefit.
The Opposition say that we must get people back to work. That is another characteristic of new Labour, as of old Labour—vacuous, well-meaning phrases that mean nothing and contribute nothing to the debate. Time and again, we ask Labour Members how they actually propose to get people back to work and they answer, "We are having a review."
Why on earth should a person under 25 receive housing benefit sufficient to cover the cost of an entire flat when they could share accommodation? Almost all hon. Members here would have shared a flat when we were under 25. It is absurd to expect low-income taxpayers to provide such people not just with shared accommodation but with flats of their own. It is ridiculous.
That leads to the general point that, the closer the standard of living for a person on benefit is to the standard that he would have if he were in employment, the less incentive there is for that person to take employment.
The Government are tackling the problem of fraud. Housing benefit probably suffers from some of the worst fraud. We have all heard of the person who draws housing benefit for a flat, moves out of the flat and in with his girl friend, lets the flat to somebody else and pockets the money. Such fraud must be rooted out.
The Opposition also expect the low-earning taxpayer to subsidise the asylum seeker. We are all prepared to subsidise the genuine asylum seeker, but the Opposition want our hard-working constituents to dig into their pockets to subsidise the bogus asylum seeker: the person who comes to Britain and tells the immigration officer a pack of lies, saying that he is here as a student or a business man, or on holiday, and then three weeks later says that in reality he is an asylum seeker. Such people do not deserve benefit, and I do not think any hon. Member could ask a low-earning taxpayer in his constituency to subsidise such people. It makes no sense at all.
Labour Members talk of pensions at 60. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, most people, given the chance, will take their pension at the earliest opportunity. That would cost the taxpayer huge amounts of money; yet we hear nothing from the Opposition about where they will find it.
We can sum up the situation by saying that the Labour party has an investment in dependency. It is dependent on those who work in the public sector and deliver the benefits. It has a vested interest in keeping people in dependent poverty. They are the Labour party's


constituency. They are the people who the Labour party thinks will vote for it. By contrast, the Conservative party is committed to a safety net for those genuinely in need—a safety net which does not smother people but provides an incentive for them to stand on their own feet. We are committed to a benefit system which is not riddled with fraud and which delivers taxpayers' money in the most cost-effective way.

Mr. Geoffrey Robinson: Of all the contributions to today's debate, that by the hon. Member for Shoreham (Mr. Stephen) was one of the more fatuous. I hope shortly to demonstrate that the thrust of new Labour's policy has, for some years now, been exactly the opposite of what the hon. Gentleman implied.
Earlier, the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) made it clear that the leaked document was an anticipation of Conservative policy. If the Government have given up on the United Kingdom's economic performance and accepted that decline is inevitable, it is not surprising that they see a major reshaping of the welfare state as an unavoidable consequence of that failure of their economic policy.
During the Conservative Government's period in office, we have had the lowest growth in GDP and the lowest growth in employment of any of the major European Union countries, and we have slipped from 13th to 18th in the prosperity league. That is hardly a record of which any Government could be proud. They are the three basic indices of prosperity—GDP, ranking in the league and the ability to create jobs. I have not invented the figures. They are published regularly, by the Government and reputable international organisations.
Conservative Members do not want to face up to the fact that, in the foreseeable future, we shall be overtaken by Thailand, Brazil and Indonesia. [Interruption.] Those are the facts. We do not produce them; they are produced for us. Conservative Members may not like those facts, but they will have to listen to them. That is why they are confronted with this radical restructuring, privatisation and downgrading of the welfare state.
The figures make the point for them. Since the Conservatives have been in office, the number of households with no wage earner has increased from one in 12 to one in five—20 per cent. Spending on means-tested benefits has increased from 17 to 35 per cent. Welfare spending on non-pensioner households—it is nothing to do with pensions, where we are relatively well funded; I do not try to deny that fact—has increased by 250 per cent. since 1979.
One can see the massive impetus that has been given to the leaked document. That is why various Conservative Members have come to their point of view, as was made clear in their speeches. The Government will start with the privatisation of invalidity benefit, which is clearly on the cards. I do not think that any hon. Member would try to deny that. They will then move to unemployment benefit, and with the insecurity of time—I say insecurity because it will not be vouchsafe for the Government to implement it—they will even look in due course at privatising the old-age pension itself.
For the Labour party, and for all parties, really—although I was surprised by some of the remarks made by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne), who tried

to associate new Labour with the policies of the present Government—that is totally unacceptable. We are not defeatist about our country. We are not pessimistic about it.
We believe that there are still things that can be done to get the welfare system to promote employment instead of being merely a safety net. We must recognise that, if we continue to regard it as such—passive, there just to support—it will never perform its proper function, which is to be a spur to employment. Only by promoting policies in that direction will we ever be able to afford it. Clearly, if the Government continue with their present policies, it will be impossible for us to do so.
Lastly, we must remember that we owe it to taxpayers, who have to pay for it. They do not want a passive system that merely supports a very heavy social security burden. They want us to ensure that we put it to productive use and get down the cost of the system as a whole. That is what we should aim to do. With that in mind, the Labour party has made a number of proposals, many of which still need to be costed and the details worked out, but at least we are considering it. We have not given up on it. Indeed, we believe that we can do it.
Let us take one example—youth unemployment and the long-term unemployed. I think that the House will agree that those are two evils in society. They are things that none of us would like to live with or be part of. None of us likes having to pay for them, and neither does the country—but they exist, and provision is made for them. Unless we tackle them, they will not get any better.
That does not just mean paying for them. It does not mean trying to make the savings that the present Government are trying to make. It is about tackling them at the core, to come up with proposals that will lead to people moving out of welfare and into work. That is why we came up with proposals for youth unemployment, to which the Government immediately say, "How are you going to fund them?"

Mr. Stephen: What are Labour's proposals?

Mr. Robinson: If the hon. Gentleman cannot read, I am sorry. If he does not want to read them, I understand that, but the proposals are quite clear. I am not speaking to the hon. Gentleman; I am speaking to the House, most of which is better informed than the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Stephen: Come on, tell us what they are.

Mr. Robinson: I am coming to them. Do not worry. Keep calm.
We have made it clear that we shall fund our proposals for youth employment from a very modest levy on the privatised monopolies, which is all they are. The programmes will be directed at getting youngsters back into work.

Mr. Stephen: How?

Mr. Robinson: We will pay a subsidy to private sector employers. Many distinguished private sector employers welcomed our proposals only last week. We have made it clear that they can have a role with the voluntary organisations on the same benefit. We have made it clear that they can be part of our youth employment plan for


the community scheme as a whole. We have made all these things perfectly clear. We believe that they can greatly benefit the youth unemployed.
I ask the hon. Gentleman to reflect on one simple fact: in many inner urban areas, in London in particular, black youth unemployment can be as high as 60 per cent. He might believe that that is acceptable, that it is something that, in the quiet of his conscience, he wants to live with, because he is defeatist and he has been there far too long—we all know that—to do anything about it; butt for us it is not an acceptable position.

Mr. Stephen: Of course I believe that there is a problem with youth unemployment. Every hon. Member knows that. What I do not believe is that the Labour party has any constructive policies to do anything about it. and all that the hon. Member has said is just the vacuous nonsense to which I referred in my speech.

Mr. Robinson: The vacuous nonsense was the hon. Member's own speech, and because it was such vacuous nonsense, he could not understand anything in it or after it, and he still does not want to. We have heard no proposals whatever from the Government or Conservative Back Benchers. We have to live with what we have and make peripheral savings where we can, some of which may be welcome—I shall not comment on that at the moment—but nothing goes to the heart of the problem.
The next thing we say is that we must provide opportunities to upgrade skills for all those who are in employment, but, as I have made clear, it must he a two-pronged attack. We have to believe that we can improve our economic performance and not just accept decline in the way in which current Government and Treasury thinking do. We need measures that improve economic performance.
That is why we continue to place overriding emphasis on two aspects: first, investment and the overriding need for it; and, secondly, improving skills. We have set that out in document after document, and in policy statement after policy statement. We await the opportunity to enact them.
Why do the Government do nothing about the poverty trap? It is more in individuals' interest in so many cases to remain on benefit than go to work. That is not something that has just happened in the past two or three years or in this Parliament. It has been growing and getting worse over the last decade or more. Yet the Government still cannot find any innovative or imaginative policies do deal with it. Why not? Because we all know that they are tired, worn out and without ideas. [Interruption.] I challenge the hon. Member for Croydon, North-East (Mr. Congdon) to give us a single idea for dealing with the poverty trap. I shall willingly give way, but he does not have one, so he will not rise.
I now come to the personal tax and benefit rates of people at the lower end of the scale. I happen to believe that, at the top end, one cannot impose penal tax rates. I think that that was a mistake. [Laughter.] I agree, and I have no personal interest. I do not necessarily believe that they should stay where they are, and that is a view that I can present on another occasion, when we discuss tax policy.
Equally, I do not believe that we can expect people at the low end to accept in effect 80 per cent. marginal tax rates, which can occur in some situations. That is why we

have come up with a series of proposals to restructure the tax system to give a much greater incentive to those who are at the bottom end.
Those are our policies. They are clear, they are coherent, and they address the heart of the issue. We want to deal with the long-term unemployed, youth unemployment, the poverty trap, the enormous disincentives of high marginal tax rates for those who are at the bottom end of the scale. We say that because the structure of work and employment in this country have so radically altered, which, in themselves, probably have nothing to do with the Government over the past 20 years.
In the past, long-term unemployment was rare. It was hardly known. Jobs were long-term. Jobs were pretty much at standard rates. It was largely men who were at work. Each one of those definitions of the economic situation our country was in some 20 years ago has quite dramatically changed over the last period of the Government in office. I do not attribute that to them, nor do I try to blame them for it. What they have to be blamed for, however, is not realising what is happening and adjusting their policies to take account for it, and to have left us now with the heavy burden of a welfare state that is not attuned to the needs of those who are living off it.
We believe that we can change that. We do not think that our proposal amounts to the dismantlement of the welfare state, which is what the Government want, or that it will lead to its privatisation. What it must lead to is its modernisation. On that, of course, the Government have given up the ghost—and the sooner they give up office, the better.

Mr. Nigel Evans: I am not so sure about all that. Again and again, it comes down to perception and reality. I am not certain whether we have sunshine and apple pie, but if we listen carefully we can hear the thunder—and a great deal of fudge from the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Robinson).
It is a shame that Labour Members are concentrating on documents leaked by potential Labour candidates rather than looking at the reality of the social security budget, which has been hurtling towards £100 billion. The extra costs imposed on taxpayers are already running at an enormous £15 a day for every working person. We must get to grips with the budget—and that is exactly what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been doing since he took up his post, with the full support of not only all Conservative Members but the 92 per cent. of people who are working and paying taxes. Those people expect the Government to spend their money responsibly, and to ensure that they are not paying too much.
As we know from announcements already made, we shall be curtailing social security expenditure by £5 billion by the end of the century, and by £15 billion by 2030. The hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) said that there was no crisis and no need to worry, but we must act now to ensure that we do not waste money that we should be passing back to taxpayers. We must not put that off for another 10 or 15 years, as the hon. Lady seemed to suggest.

Ms Lynne: I said that it was time to plan now, but not to panic. I wish that the hon. Gentleman would get my words right.

Mr. Evans: Now is the time both to plan and to act. No one is asking us to panic. If we waited until the time when the hon. Lady suggested we would start to act, we would be in a panic—and so would every taxpayer who opened his wage packet and discovered how much extra money the Government were having to take for non-essential social security spending.
As I have said in the Chamber before, I hope that there will be no changes in expenditure on child benefit, especially for those whose children—16 to 18-year-olds—are in further and higher education. We want to encourage such youngsters to take advantage of further and higher education. If changes were made, thousands of them would be affected, in all our constituencies. They would be deterred from attending schools such as Clitheroe Royal grammar school in my constituency, and sixth form colleges.
Seven million families receive child benefit for 13 million youngsters. More than 1 million of those youngsters would be affected if child benefit were taken away from them. The last thing we want is for the Government to raid the child benefit kitty to save money so that it looks as though they were being careful. Youngsters who could not proceed to further education could be damaged for life. We should encourage them to take up the opportunity. In effect, a tax of £560 would be levied on all those 16-year-olds, and a tax of more than £1,000 would be levied on 16 to 18-year-olds in further education.
If we accept the principle that child benefit should be taken from that age group, we are attacking the very soul of the child benefit system that has proved so effective over the years. If we accept that principle, there is no reason why child benefit should not be means-tested—or, indeed, removed from children in education per se and replaced by some form of income support. Is this the real agenda behind some of the proposals that we are hearing from Opposition Members?
Currently, 72 per cent. of 16 to 18-year-olds stay at school; in 1979, the figure was only 59 per cent. The number of youngsters with unskilled parents has risen from 20 per cent. in 1979 to 56 per cent. The hon. Member for Coventry, North-West talked of a skilled and educated work force. Would it not be a tragedy if some of those youngsters were denied the opportunity to stay in education just because their parents could not afford it, and if those parents ordered them to go out and get a job irrespective of how low paid it was?
For many families—especially low-paid families—child benefit, as a percentage of their incomes, is far more important than it is for those who earn a great deal more; but they would be hit. The "nearly poor" would be hit. The hon. Gentleman spoke of the poverty trap. If his party implemented its proposal, a fresh poverty trap would be created for many families with youngsters wishing to proceed to further and higher education.
I know that not all Opposition Members believe in the policy. Not all of them believe in clobbering 16 to 18-year-olds and their families. They must speak now: they must not remain silent. During today's debate, there has been a conspiracy of silence among Opposition

Members who are not prepared to make real spending commitments. From so many of them, it has all been apple pie and sunshine, but we need to get to grips with real commitments from the Labour party. We need to know exactly what its spending pledges are. There is no point in being presented with a menu with no prices; we need to know all the items and all the prices, so that the public can be made aware of what lies ahead.
One justification that has been advanced for withdrawing child benefit from 16 to 18-year-olds taking advantage of further and higher education is that a number of people benefit who ought not to—youngsters in private schools, perhaps, receiving the sort of education that is frowned on by Opposition Members. Those Opposition Members fail to recognise that a number of youngsters who attend private schools have assisted places, or are receiving bursaries or grants. It would be spiteful to damage such education and deprive youngsters of it.
It is no wonder that the Child Poverty Action Group is against the Labour party's proposal. Child benefit as it is currently paid has proved extremely beneficial and effective. Labour's proposal would mean a tax increase of 5p in the pound for families during the two years in which their youngsters continued in full-time further education.
When we are considering ways of reforming the welfare state, we should not attack child benefit for 16 to 18-year-olds. We have been very productive in saving money in other areas. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have mentioned fraud, and I agree that we need to get to grips with that problem, but we are talking about expenditure of more than £90 billion. Various estimates are thrown around about the true level of fraud—it has been estimated at between £2 billion and £9 billion—but paying more attention to the problem would certainly pay greater dividends, and would have the full backing of the public.
The telephone number on which people can ring the Department of Social Security when they know that fraud is taking place should be more widely available. Every pound saved in that way can be targeted more efficiently towards those who desperately need benefits, or returned to those who paid in the first place—the taxpayers. I hope that more benefit claimants will use identity cards bearing photographs, so that they can show that they are entitled to benefit.
Housing benefit has been mentioned time and again. It seems to have gone completely out of control. More checks are needed on claimants to ensure that the money goes to those who genuinely need it. We must end the scams that we read about in the newspapers, in which thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money is ripped off every week by people who ought to be put away rather than allowed to steal money from taxpayers and those who deserve benefit.
We have again heard much about all the wonderful sights that Opposition Members expect to see if the nightmare happens and the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) gets his hands on the key to No. 10. We want to control expenditure through the reforms that have already occurred in the social security and welfare systems, but we also want as much encouragement as possible for the economy to grow. I think that is what the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West spoke about. He is a business man, and if he


took an honest, stark look at the proposals by his leader, he would see that they will merely add to the welfare system and the social security budget.
The social chapter, the 48-hour directive, a minimum wage and the differentials that people would start to claim would have an effect. It is not just a question of £4 or £4.50, or whatever the figure per hour would be, because differentials would grind their way through the system. No wonder the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) has talked about a massive shake-out in the economy if a minimum wage is introduced. That will be the real problem.
Germany has more than 4 million unemployed, France has more than 3 million, and in Spain youth unemployment is about 30 per cent. Those are horrific figures and, if we introduced Opposition policies, unemployment, which has been falling dramatically for over two years, would go up again. That would add to the social security budget, and we would have to turn yet again to the taxpayer and ask him for more money to dole out to other people.
We need to take measures that will continue to attract inward investment. Deregulation must continue, so that businesses are able to flourish, take people into work and use some of their profits to train the work force and invest in people, which has been particularly successful. Those are the measures that we should take, but we have heard drivel from Opposition Members about policies that would increase the social security budget. We know what the Opposition stand for, because they have not changed their spots. New Labour would mean new spending and new taxes for everybody.

Mr. John McAllion: This is a more serious debate about an extremely serious subject than might be deduced from speeches by Conservative Members or from the general attitude that they have displayed.
At the start of the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) spoke about the reality of poverty and inequality in Britain today, and there was an immediate response by Conservative Members. One of them piped up that at least the poor were richer than they used to be. He had no sooner closed his mouth than another said that at least the poor were not dramatically poorer than they used to be. Another Conservative Member tied himself in statistical knots trying to prove that poverty does not exist in Britain, that it is all a matter of definition.
In terms of complacency, smugness and dismissiveness about poverty, Conservative Members should be utterly ashamed of themselves. I remind them about the reality of poverty. Some months ago, I had the privilege of attending the national poverty hearings which were organised by Church Action on Poverty. They were held in Dean's yard and were different from any hearings that I had ever attended. They were attended by about 300 leading figures. As well as hon. Members, there were leading churchmen and heads of national charities—the sort of people who normally talk about the poor and make decisions about them. However, on that occasion, they were there not to talk but to listen, because on the platform were poor people from every corner of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland.
One by one those people described what it is like to be poor in Britain in the 1990s. Almost any one of those contributions would have shed light on our debate, but one sticks in my memory. It was made by a disabled single mother on income support who lives in an inner-city area of London. It is the usual sort of poor area to be found in inner cities throughout the country and they are characterised by poverty, crime, vandalism and drug taking. Her son had special educational needs but, because her local education authority was strapped for cash—or should I say starved of cash by the Government—it could not meet her son's educational needs other than through its residential budget.
The woman was told that, if she wanted her son's needs to be met, he would have to be taken into local authority care and put in a residential home. She explained to the meeting that she had no choice; that she was a concerned mother who wanted the best for her son; and that the only way she could get that was to put him into local authority care. Her son was very young and she described how difficult it was to explain to him that his mother was putting him into care, forcing him to live in a local authority home.
Of course her son did not understand why his mother was turning him away and putting him into local authority care, and she spoke about the damage that was done to the relationship between her and her son. She was not describing a scene from a 19th century novel by Charles Dickens or from a third-world country but speaking about what is happening in Britain here and now. She depends on the welfare state and is not worried about its cost: she is worried about how poor it is at looking after people.

Mrs. Teresa Gorman: What kind of mother would push her child out into care and not want to look after him at home? Even if she could not give him the best of everything, she should still want to care for him, and the welfare system would help her to do that. It is a travesty for the hon. Gentleman to give such examples.

Mr. McAllion: If the hon. Lady had come to the national poverty hearings and had taken the trouble to listen to poor people, she would understand what kind of mother that woman was. She is a caring mother who cares about her son, and she wanted the best for him. She was forced into her action by people such as the hon. Lady and her hon. Friends in government. She should not try to talk down the poor. This country has too many people like the hon. Lady and her hon. Friends.
I am trying to get Conservative Members to understand what we are debating when we speak about poverty. At the heart of the debate is the cold question whether we can afford the welfare state in its present form—whether it is sustainable and affordable. In his tawdry contribution, the Secretary of State said that the central issue facing every developed country was the reform of the welfare state to make it affordable. There is nothing new or surprising in Tory Ministers making such statements.
Hon. Members have mentioned the infamous Treasury kids whose document expresses the unthinkable—the break-up and the privatisation of large parts of the welfare state. There is nothing new in that document, because the break-up and privatisation of the welfare state has begun. That can be seen in the private finance initiative in the


health service. A whole new generation of privately owned and privately managed hospitals will replace the existing network of NHS hospitals if the Tory party is re-elected to government.
Future health services will be delivered by private companies profiteering on the backs of contracts that have been taken from NHS hospitals. That is already happening, and the kids in the Treasury do not have to write about it. The Government are doing it at Stonehaven in Scotland, for example. There is competitive tendering throughout the health service, and swathes of the NHS are disappearing into the private sector. Privatisation of care for the elderly proceeds apace in every part of the country. Local authority homes have been forced to shut so that elderly people can be transferred to private-sector nursing and residential homes where the workers and the cost of care are cheaper.
The jobseeker's allowance is the latest in a long list of Government changes to deprive the unemployed of benefits to which they used to be entitled. In the Government amendment, the aim is
to seek positive and imaginative ways of ensuring that the welfare state continues to be both effective and affordable".
That sentence could easily be replaced by a sentence which said, "to seek ways of privatising the welfare state." That is exactly what it means, and that is what the Government are about.
It is often forgotten that arguments about the affordability of the welfare state are as old as the welfare state itself. There have always been fainthearts who argue that the country cannot afford a welfare state. At least those who argued that back in the 1940s had more weighty arguments on their side than those who argue it in this day and age. For example, last week, during the debate on the economy, the Chancellor told the House that the British economy was now entering its fifth year of economic expansion. He said that living standards were rising, unemployment was falling, output was up, inflation and interest rates were low, investment prospects were good and profits were up. In other words, everything in the economic garden was rosy.
This afternoon, at Question Time, the Prime Minister said that the country is in the best economic circumstances that we could hope for. Yet, having been told about that prosperous economy, suddenly we hear that we cannot afford the welfare state that we have had for the past 50 years.
Let us compare the allegedly favourable circumstances that we now have with the circumstances that faced the Labour Government who created the welfare state in 1945. At that time, John Maynard Keynes described the circumstances as the equivalent of a financial Dunkirk. During the war, Britain had lost a quarter of its entire national wealth—a loss estimated at that time at £7,000 million. It had sacrificed its export trade, which was down to £400 million in 1945. It had been forced to sell off many of its overseas assets. At the same time, it was required to import goods costing £1,200 million a year just to maintain wartime levels of consumption. It faced a vast burden of overseas indebtedness—£1,750 million was owed to Egypt, and to India and other Commonwealth countries. It faced a balance of payments deficit which was estimated at £1,200 million over the first three post-war years.
The Labour Government inherited a country and an industrial and economic infrastructure which were ravaged by war and geared for war. They faced massive problems of demobilisation and reconstruction which no Government have had to confront since. To cap all that, the lend-lease agreement with the United States, which was worth £1,350 million a year, was suddenly cut off after victory over Japan.
History would have understood if that Government, facing those economic problems, had backed off from their commitment to establish a welfare state. Far from backing off, the Labour Government went forward even more enthusiastically in their determination to do that. Let us remind ourselves of the scale of the changes introduced. They introduced not just a social revolution but a socialist revolution.
That Government introduced a free and comprehensive national health service to be funded not out of insurance but out of general taxation. They rehoused millions of displaced people through a public programme of new and renovated housing. They introduced a comprehensive national insurance scheme for sickness, unemployment and old age, all based on a clear principle of universality. There was a 44 per cent. increase in the basic rate of insurance payments, a new maternity benefit, the scrapping of the six-month limit on unemployment benefit, a new benefit for widows, old-age pensions above the levels recommended by Beveridge in his report, industrial injuries benefits which were 70 per cent. above existing levels, and a new system of national assistance to help the poorest and most vulnerable groups in society.
In the best of economic circumstances, it would have been a difficult task to introduce those changes, but that Labour Government introduced them in the face of the worst economic circumstances imaginable.
We are often told that the golden rule of borrowing is that the Government should borrow only to invest and never to finance current expenditure. It is often described on both sides of the House as "spending wisely". I thank God that nobody had heard of that rule in 1945, because the welfare state into which I was born and from which I and many millions of others have benefited was created by that Labour Government's determination to build on the back of borrowing. They negotiated a multi-billion dollar loan from the United States Government, and, on the back of that loan, established the national health service, launched the massive house building programme and set up the comprehensive system of social insurance from the cradle to the grave which is so familiar to many people in this country today.
I am not suggesting that today's welfare state can be sustained simply by increasing levels of borrowing. Public borrowing is already out of control because of the Government's incompetence. In present circumstances, it would be economic and social madness massively to increase the level of borrowing. However, I suggest that, if today's Government showed the same political will and determination as that Labour Government in 1945, new solutions, appropriate to our times, could be found to fund the needs of the welfare state. I will mention just a few of them.

Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: Does my hon. Friend concede that one of the greatest problems facing Britain today is the vast gap between the rich and the poor and the fact that, according to OECD figures, it is the fastest growing gap between rich and poor in any


industrialised country? Does he agree, therefore, that what we need is increased Government income from a higher rate of taxation for the very richest within our society?

Mr. McAllion: That is a fair point, and I was about to come to that.
Nobody would suggest that taxation should be increased for the vast majority. It has already been increased to penal levels by the Government. What about the small minority who have grown fat on the tax cuts of the 1980s? The richest tenth of the population have seen their real incomes increased by 61 per cent. through the 1980s and into the 1990s. Under a fair and progressive tax system, would it not be right for those people to start to pay out more of the wealth that they were given for nothing during those years? Would it not be right for the redistribution from the poor to the rich that occurred under the Tory Government to be reversed under a Labour Government through the medium of the welfare state?
I am being told that I should finish, so I do not have time to outline the other ways that could be used to fund the needs of the welfare state. There are other—[Interruption.] If the Minister for Social Security and Disabled People wants to speak to me afterwards, I will be happy to give him further details. However, he should not get too near me. For once, I have realised the value of the red line on the Floor of the Chamber that keeps me apart from Tory Members. Some of the comments that I have heard from Tory Members today have been so incendiary that it is lucky that they were a good distance away from me.
The intellectual climate in which these debates are held is important. One of the things that we are often told is unrealisable today is what is known as equality of outcomes. It is no longer meant to be practical to argue that in this society we can afford equality of outcomes for everybody or that we should all get the same share of the country's wealth. We are told that there should be equality of opportunity, which allows for inequality of outcomes. That is the Government's argument, but I cannot agree with it.
I am from Scotland, and one of my heroes is Jimmy Maxton, the red Clydesider, who was one of the greatest Members that the House ever had. Throughout his career, he wanted to see a welfare state established in this country. At the end of his career, he was asked, "What does socialism mean to you?" He said:
Socialism means nothing to me if it does not mean that as I have a house to live in, you also have a house to live in; that as I have food to eat, you also have food to eat; that as I have education, recreation and leisure, you also have education, recreation and leisure.
Jimmy Maxton had never heard the phrase "equality of outcomes", but that is what he was talking about. That is what the welfare state is about. Nobody in this society should be denied the benefits that come from the wealth that is generated. It should be shared as fairly and equally as possible. We want to see a welfare state that begins to put right the wrongs that have been done over the past 17 years. That will not happen unless there is a change of Government and, thank God, there will be a change of Government soon.

Mrs. Teresa Gorman: I should like to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on his determination to see that the £90 billion that we

spend on our massive welfare programme is correctly spent. I welcome his stringent attitude to his job arid compare it favourably to the sloppy, sentimental and patronising attitude of the Labour party to people who depend on welfare in one way or another. The Labour party treats them as if they are somehow different from the rest of humanity, are unable to look after their lives and manage their affairs and must be treated as wards of the state.
I remind the Opposition that charity begins not only at home, but in the home. It is the Government's duty to foster the citizen's responsibility for looking after his own family. That includes elderly relatives, many of whom are cared for and loved by their families and are not left to languish and depend on the state. It also includes responsibility for children as they grow up and when they leave school and start looking for work.
When I left school, I did not expect the state to support me. I regarded it as my duty—so did my parents—to find work. In those days—which were not all that long ago—young people expected to take jobs on modest wages which enabled them to contribute towards the family budget. We should be nurturing such a society, not one that allows able-bodied people to languish on welfare, contributing nothing to the general budget of the country.
There are far too many examples of that. The Opposition may call it the poverty trap; in my opinion, welfare is too generous in allowing people to remain in what is technically defined as poverty. One of the most sensible remarks that I have ever heard was by the Chief Rabbi, who said that poverty should be a vale of tears through which people pass, not a land in which they dwell. The Opposition seem to wallow in the idea that people dwell in poverty. They treat it as if it were their constituency.

Mr. Corbyn: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Mrs. Gorman: No. I do not have sufficient time.
The Opposition always back up their remarks with extreme examples of hard cases and then suggest that we should make laws accordingly.
In my constituency, I meet young people living in subsidised accommodation provided by the state. I have met hairdressers who do not want to work because they get only £50 a week and have to rely on tips, and young men who trained as chefs but gave up work because they did not want to work unsocial hours and they could live on the welfare state. Such behaviour is wrong, and we have to wipe it out.
In particular, we have to deal with fraud. In one minute flat, I want to mention three examples that I hope my hon. Friend will address. First, more than one case of fraud involving birth certificates has been brought to my attention. People working in the welfare system identify children who die soon after birth, but have been registered. They obtain copies of their birth certificates and, 15, 16 or 18 years later, use those certificates fraudulently to obtain benefits for themselves. They are defrauding the system of millions of pounds.
Secondly, people are fraudulently claiming carers' allowances. Their elderly relatives are being cared for in institutions, but they continue to claim carers' allowances. Thirdly, there is housing benefit fraud, which has been addressed on a number of occasions.
My right hon. Friend is quite right to find ways of making the system more efficient. When the Conservatives took office in 1979, we took on a load of neanderthal nationalised industries that were making massive losses. They were over-administered and ineffectively run with featherbedding and other practices. If my right hon. Friend can do for the welfare state and the massive budget he handles what the Conservative Government did for those nationalised industries, he will have done the country a great service. I congratulate him on his efforts and ask him not to be too timid in facing down the Opposition.

Mr. Keith Bradley: It has become almost customary to say that we have had a wide-ranging and interesting debate, but for once it is absolutely true. Speeches from hon. Members revealed the stark difference between the views of the Conservative party and the Labour party. The public will understand those views at the general election, when they will be faced with the choice between defending the future of positive welfare state and supporting the way in which the Tory party continues to dismantle and privatise it.
In reminding ourselves of the purpose of the debate, we make no apology for recognising the strand of thought that has flowed from the No Turning Back group, the Adam Smith Institute and other organisations with which the Secretary of State has some sympathy to the Treasury document entitled "Strategic Considerations for the Treasury". Ministers and Conservative Back Benchers have tried to rubbish the contents of that document by attacking an individual civil servant rather than properly addressing the issues in that report.
It is interesting that tonight Conservative Members have reinforced rather than allayed the fears that the document recognised. It is clear that the Government plan to tackle the economic decline identified in the report by the wholesale privatisation of the welfare state, affecting state pensions, insurance benefits, unemployment benefits and much more. In a nutshell, it is about dismantling and privatising the welfare state.
We do not need to go into further detail about, for example, "The Fortune Account" proposed by the Adam Smith Institute. As the document stated, it is not a welfare entitlement but merely a savings account. The benefit that it confers reflects the contributions that have been made; it is not a Government promise of a defined benefit. That demonstrates the Government's thinking on these matters.
The Treasury document also admits that, contrary to claims by the Secretary of State in his famous speech in Southwark cathedral, the poor have been getting poorer and inequality has been widening. There is considerable evidence—which Conservative Members have tried to undermine—in excellent reports by the Rowntree Trust, among others, and in the detailed examination by The Independent on Sunday only this weekend of the new and authoritative report by the United Nations that reveals that Britain is now the most unequal country in the western world. The gap between rich and poor is as great as in Nigeria.

Mrs. Gorman: That is stupid.

Mr. Bradley: The hon. Lady says from a sedentary position that it is stupid, but it is an excellent report of an authoritative study by the United Nations. No Conservative Member has even attempted to undermine its contents. [Interruption.] They can only mutter from a sedentary position that it is nonsense.
We shall hear more about that report and the Government's reaction to it. Statistics in the human development report published last week demonstrate that inequality has grown sharply under the Conservatives and that the poor in Britain now have to live on much the same incomes as their equivalent in Hungary and Korea. Are the Government proud of that?
Do the Government further recognise that the claim by the then Prime Minister, now Baroness Thatcher, in 1988 that
Everyone in the nation has benefited from increased prosperity
has proved not to be the case? Statistics show that the poorest people's share of Britain's national income shrank in the 1980s for the first time since the second world war. What is worse, their poverty deepened. The real income of the poorest tenth of the population plunged by 20 per cent. between 1979 and 1993, while the richest tenth increased their takings by 61 per cent. That is the real inequality that confronts our people.
What have the Government done about that? They have launched repeated attacks on vulnerable groups. They claim that it is all about targeting, but closer examination reveals that it is not about targeting but about reducing benefit to vulnerable people who desperately need it. I need only cite one or two examples, such as—

Mr. Lilley: When the hon. Gentleman gives us his examples, will he tell the House whether he proposes to reverse them, or whether he thinks that they are basically acceptable to a future Labour Government?

Mr. Bradley: What we are doing is showing clearly what the Government have done; that is the purpose of the debate.
Let us take an example. When incapacity benefit was introduced, the Government said that it would lead to better targeting, by means of a more effective medical test. Fine. Although we argued against the nature of the medical test, we accepted that there was a need to examine the way in which the benefit operated. Yet what did the Government do for the people who passed the new medical test? They cut the benefit to which they were entitled. Now we have two groups of people with exactly the same degree of disability who receive different levels of benefit—one group on invalidity benefit and the other on the new incapacity benefit. Is that what the Government are about?
Another example is the reduced earnings allowance, about which we have heard much today. Delegations have been to Parliament today, and I make no apology for bringing up the subject again.

Mr. Allan Rogers: I wish that, when my hon. Friend talks about reduced earnings allowance, he would use the old term "special hardship allowance". Conservative Members have implied that some form of


gratuity is being handed out to people, whereas those of my constituents who receive reduced earnings allowance are people who, as a result of working in coal mining, for example, contracted a disease, or were maimed, often in their early twenties, and who have had to suffer a lifetime of bringing up their families on extremely reduced incomes. The Conservative Members who have given us the benefit of their "Mein Kampf" fantasies should bear in mind that we are talking about people who have given their lives, and sometimes parts of their bodies, for the sake of the energy needs and the productivity of this country.

Mr. Bradley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that contribution.
What is clear about reduced earnings allowance is that its recipients were told that they would receive the benefit for life. That is what the documents told them. The Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Evans)—I see that he is in his place—said on Welsh television that, if people had documents to prove that that is what they were told, their cases would be re-examined, concessions would be made and the hardship would be addressed.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Roger Evans): rose—

Mr. Bradley: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm tonight that he will do that—yes or no?

Mr. Evans: The hon. Gentleman has not carefully quoted what was said on Welsh television. In fact there are a few, and only a few, people with documents in their possession suggesting that the benefit was awarded for life. That should never have happened, although it may have been justified in a few cases. If there has been an official error, and loss can be established to have resulted from it, there is a scheme for compensation.

Mr. Bradley: I welcome the Minister's intervention. I understood him to have said that, if people who have lost the benefit can prove that they have a document saying that it was awarded for life, they can have it for life—and that is the basis on which we shall proceed.
What I have described are just some of the changes that the Government have already made. Now they are introducing a whole new tranche of changes, including the closure of the benefits line. It is interesting that the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) called for a new telephone line on fraud. We welcome that; we have been calling for it year after year, and belatedly the Government now intend to act. But surely it is perverse logic to close at the same time the line that gives people help. There is a need to root out fraud wherever it occurs, but people have entitlements, too.
The benefit buses that used to travel around the country are also to be withdrawn. They were another means of ensuring that people received their just entitlement, so the Government are reducing the information and help available.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) said in his opening speech, now there is to be privatisation of the administration of child benefit, with all the problems—

Mr. Corbyn: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Bradley: No, I shall not give way, because I must complete my brief remarks.
It is not clear from what the Government have said why they have chosen child benefit—a benefit efficiently administered and well organised by the Benefits Agency, whose administration costs are only 2 per cent. In his opening speech, the Secretary of State did not tell us precisely what savings would be gained from privatisation of the administration of child benefit, and what safeguards would be introduced for confidentiality and other matters of accountability involving the work undertaken by the private service.
We do not oppose the idea of finding out where private companies could bring their expertise properly to bear on the administration of the social security system, but the Government are introducing the practice in pilot areas, so that private companies can cherry-pick the areas of work in which they believe they can make the best profit out of privatisation. That is not the way to proceed.
Similarly, the Government are to deny the poorest people the opportunity of using direct payments in future. That is disgraceful. The private utilities and other organisations encourage most of us to take out direct debits to help us budget, although many of us have the income to be able to organise our payments for ourselves; yet the people with the most meagre of incomes, who greatly need help with budgeting and the payment of bills, will be denied that opportunity by the Government. I urge the Secretary of State to reconsider that disgraceful act.
In the past, we have seen what privatisation without proper control or regulation means. We have heard many examples today, such as the way in which the mis-selling of private pensions without proper regulation has caused hardship and anguish to many people. We have heard similar stories about people who have taken out inappropriate mortgages or endowment policies, without having received proper information and support before the decisions were taken.
Let us consider one example of the range of costs that will be involved if everyone has to rely on private insurance. In January, an interesting "Panorama" programme showed what the real costs would be for families if there were no adequate and effective state provision. For example, life cover would cost £70 a month, plus £40 a month for critical illness insurance and £40 a month for health insurance.
Pension provision would cost £500 per person a month, or £1,000 for a couple. The cost of private education, about which Conservative Members will know more than I, would amount to £1,000 a month. If we add up all those costs, compared with the real, effective and comprehensive state provision, for many families they do not bear thinking about. They will not have adequate provision. They will not be covered. Not only will they fall through the safety net; the safety net will not be there for them in the first place.
That is why the Labour party will be committed to a proper welfare state based on sound social insurance principles, and why the message tonight is simple: the welfare state is not safe in the hands of the Tory party.

The Minister for Social Security and Disabled People (Mr. Alistair Burt): At the end of the contribution by the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Bradley), one thing about which we were not clear is what sort of welfare state there would be under
the Labour party. What commitments have we heard the party make this evening to do anything about the matters that Labour spokesmen have raised with such indignation?
I intend to consider as many as possible of the points that have been raised in the debate, but first I shall say a little about the structure of the welfare state as we see it. The Government have faced up to the problems that have been mentioned by hon. Members on both sides of the House, which have produced a rising bill both for benefits and for delivering benefits.
Three years ago, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State initiated the current debate about the growth in social security expenditure, and spelled out the principles that should underlie an effective and affordable system. Such a system should answer today's needs, not some outdated idea of what people require. It should protect the most vulnerable and focus on those in the greatest need, while bearing down on fraud and abuse. It should encourage independence and improve incentives, it should be affordable, and its administration should be efficient and offer value for money. I venture to suggest that that is still an effective set of principles according to which we can consider the future of the welfare state.
Does the Labour party really believe that the welfare state can somehow stand still? Do Labour Members think that the rising cost of welfare, and the rising cost of administering it, can simply be ignored, and that the taxpayer should, and will, simply go on paying? Do they think that abuse can be heaped on us for what we are doing and are attempting to do with the welfare state, without any commitment about what they would do?
It is precisely because the Government did accept, and continue to accept, that we have a responsibility not to pass on an escalating bill to future generations, because we made the hard decisions, and because we took the risk of breaking new ground, that social security in the future will be affordable. That does not mean ignoring the needs of those who cannot provide for themselves. The Government remain committed to maintaining a safety net that will ensure that the poorest in our society are supported and protected.
Just as we recognised the need to contain the cost of benefits, so we recognised the need to maximise efficiency and value for money in delivering them. Our aim is to save about 25 per cent. of the current £3 billion cost of operating the benefit system—about £750 million off the taxpayer's bill—while providing a service that is as good as or better than the present service and, most important, without resorting to reductions in benefits.
Significant savings can be made from simplified, efficient processes and from making the best use of the most modern information technology. We believe, however, that the only way to ensure maximum cost-effectiveness and value for money is to open up the system to competition: providing efficiency incentives for in-house suppliers, enabling comparison of their performance with each other and with private sector suppliers and moving to private sector administration where that provides better value for money.
Some Opposition Members clearly think that we are rushing into that in the same way as they rush into ill-thought-through plans for the future—plans from which they, as the Opposition, have the luxury of being

able to withdraw when they see that they do not work. On the contrary, we have a carefully planned strategy to move in a series of gradual steps towards a mixed economy of provision. We made a conscious decision to start with a relatively simple and straightforward benefit in child benefit, and we shall look carefully at the emerging results of that before we decide which other areas to consider for operation by the private sector.
I assure the House that there is no question of wholesale out-sourcing. There will be a pragmatic, step-by-step process, with testing and assurance at each stage, built on the principles that I mentioned. Out-sourcing will take place only where we are satisfied that there are real gains to be made, because the private sector can offer greater expertise or value for money. I should stress that that does not mean that we believe that our own staff have failed. We recognise that they have delivered many efficiencies over the years. We do not think that the private sector is necessarily superior in this, but we realise that it can offer expertise in process review and information technology, and has the capacity to make capital investment where it is needed to produce the best results.
There were a variety of fascinating contributions to the debate. The hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), whom we welcome as a recent product of the national health service, made a series of speeches that he will not mind if I characterise as real old Labour. It is noticeable that he does not always get the response that he wants from the Opposition Front-Bench team. He was challenged about what his party would do on the jobseeker's allowance, and no commitment was forthcoming. He spoke movingly about the pensions link with earnings, but he knows that his colleagues have not decided whether they are going to restore it. He will pray in vain for that.
The concerns raised by the hon. Member for Walsall, North were mirrored in other Opposition contributions. The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) spoke with his customary passion and warmth for the people he represents. We are all confronted in our surgeries by people whose experiences are radically different from our own, and we know how miserable and difficult people's lives can be. We are all concerned to find out what we can do to make them different. The only point that divides the hon. Gentleman and me is that I do not believe that means and resources are the only way to deal with some of the problems. The difficulties of the woman he met at the hearings could stem as much from administration problems in her home town, and how to deal with increasing costs and special educational needs, as from anything else.
How is the hon. Member for Dundee, East going to satisfy the problems of the woman he heard at the hearings, if he believes that it is all about resources, but the taxation policy supported by his hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Robinson), who said that he was satisfied with our policy on high-income earners and taxation, is to be the taxation policy for the future, and if the comments of the Leader of the Opposition today when he talked to local government—to the effect that there would be no new resources from local government from central Government—are true? They cannot be satisfied with Labour looking for the ever-empty pocket in the future. They have to be satisfied by the sort of hard and difficult work that we do to make


the public pound go further, to introduce the private sector and new ideas, to deliver better for the people whose lives are more difficult.

Mr. Geoffrey Robinson: For the record, I by no means said what the Minister implied. If only the Government were as concerned about incentives to work at the bottom end of the scale as they are about the top end, we should have some changes in the welfare programme to encourage those. Far from being satisfied at the top end, my views are well known and have been made clear elsewhere. Perhaps the Minister will now tell us what he proposes to do to provide incentives at the bottom end of the income scale—incentives for people to work.

Mr. Burt: The hon. Gentleman spoke with great warmth and passion about the existing tax situation for higher income earners, which I can well understand in the circumstances, but I accept what he said. The hon. Gentleman challenged us and asked what we were doing about the poverty trap and getting people back to work. Conservative Members gave him half a dozen examples of what we have done—family credit, the earnings top-up system, child care allowances, and the changes that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor made a couple of years ago, from which 750,000 people will benefit this year—but he did not seem inclined to be that interested in those.
To return to the hon. Member for Dundee, East, there is one way to satisfy the need for revenue costs in his constituency that he did not mention: the tartan tax. The views that he expressed, and the sense that I got from him of the sort of commitment that he wants from his Front-Bench team, ought to be read and understood by many people in Scotland, as an example of what he would really like to do if he came to office. Many voters in Scotland would get a real sense of what Labour control would be like, if the hon. Gentleman could have his way.

Mr. McAllion: Does the Minister not understand that taxes raised in Scotland with the consent of the Scottish people would help the poor in Scotland? That is why Labour is committed to giving a Scottish Parliament tax-raising powers.

Mr. Burt: We all want resources to be used to help the poor. I was pointing out that the hon. Gentleman's care and concern for his constituents cannot be satisfied, in his view, without substantially increasing taxes. He wants to deliver everything through the public sector. He believes that massive resources will have to be introduced to do the job. I do not get any sense of that sort of commitment from his Front-Bench colleagues, and I bet he wishes sometimes that they would speak with half the passion and concern that he brings to debates.
A number of my Conservative colleagues made useful contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth), in a good contribution which we shall miss for some time, posed the Opposition sensible questions about the future of welfare, but he got no response. My hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Stephen) mentioned the Opposition's unwillingness to declare what they would do. Interestingly, he mentioned new technology, which at one and the same time affects jobs, but gives the social security system challenges, in terms of delivering benefits and dealing

with the future. He again mentioned the essential principle behind why we are opening up the social security delivery system to ideas from the private sector and to take more account of new technology.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans), in his usual forthright contribution, again laid waste to the Opposition on child benefit, pointing out what we have come to know: whereas we have ideas to save money in administration on social security, the Opposition's only concrete idea for saving money has been to save £700 million from 16 and 17-year-olds who would otherwise have received child benefit. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his hard work in raising that issue.
In a fascinating contrast to the hon. Member for Dundee, East, my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) put another side of the coin when she gave her views of individual responsibility. In essence, there should be no difficulty of reconciling those views in a modern society. The individual has to have a proper opportunity to grow, to develop responsibility and to develop all his or her talents or abilities. That will not produce equality of outcome, but there is no reason why the individual, in pursuing his or her talents or abilities for best, should not also have a community responsibility, which need not always be delivered through the tax system.
The hon. Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) made a balanced contribution, which I much enjoyed. She was right to talk about not panicking about the demographic situation in the United Kingdom. The reason the Government do not panic is that we have seen ahead and planned for those changes. We changed the earnings link with pensions precisely because we needed to. There is no evidence that the Opposition prepared for the future in the way that we did.
We have had intermittent fun this evening with Labour's draft press release—a paper full of blanks into which can be inserted whatever one wants. I wondered what it reminded me of, and, having listened to Labour's Front-Bench spokesmen, I now know: it is their draft manifesto. Anything can be inserted into the blanks. Will there be a change of policy? Their answer is, "Don't know, fill it in later." Will they retain what they have just opposed in the House? Their answer is, "Don't know, fill it in later." That is Labour party policy, about which we have heard nothing. The Government have given a concrete demonstration of the future structure of the welfare state. It is well thought through and it will be properly funded. It is the best opportunity that the country can have. Vote for us; leave them alone.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—

The House divided:: Ayes 235, Noes 275.

Division No. 210]
[6.59 pm


AYES


Abbott, Ms Diane
Banks, Tony (Newham NW)


Ainger, Nick
Barnes, Harry


Ainsworth, Robert (Cov'try NE)
Barron, Kevin


Allen, Graham
Battle, John


Alton, David
Bayley, Hugh


Anderson, Donald (Swansea E)
Beckett, Margaret


Anderson, Ms Janet (Ros'dale)
Bell, Stuart


Armstrong, Ms Hilary
Bennett, Andrew F


Ashdown, Paddy
Benton, Joe


Austin-Walker, John
Bermingham, Gerald






Berry, Roger
Harman, Ms Harriet


Betts, Clive
Harvey, Nick


Boateng, Paul
Hattersley, Roy


Bradley, Keith
Henderson, Doug


Bray, Dr Jeremy
Heppell, John


Brown, Gordon (Dunfermline E)
Hill, Keith (Streatham)


Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)
Hinchliffe, David


Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)
Hodge, Ms Margaret


Burden, Richard
Hoey, Miss Kate


Byers, Stephen
Hogg, Norman (Cumbernauld)


Caborn, Richard
Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)


Callaghan, Jim
Howarth, George (Knowsley N)


Campbell, Mrs Anne (C'bridge)
Howells, Dr Kim


Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)
Hoyle, Doug


Campbell, Ronnie (Blyth V)
Hughes, Kevin (Doncaster N)


Campbell-Savours, D N
Hughes, Robert (Ab'd'n N)


Canavan, Dennis
Hughes, Simon (Southwark)


Cann, Jamie
Hutton, John


Chisholm, Malcolm
Jackson, Ms Glenda (Hampst'd)


Clapham, Michael
Jamieson, David


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Jenkins, Brian (SE Staffs)


Clarke, Eric (Midlothian)
Johnston, Sir Russell


Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)
Jones, Barry (Alyn & D'side)


Clelland, David
Jones, Dr L (B'ham Selly Oak)


Clwyd, Mrs Ann
Jones, Martyn (Clwyd SW)


Coffey, Ms Ann
Jones, Nigel (Cheltenham)


Cohen, Harry
Jowell, Ms Tessa


Connarty, Michael
Kaufman, Gerald


Cook, Robin (Livingston)
Keen, Alan


Corbyn, Jeremy
Kennedy, Mrs Jane (Broadgreen)


Corston, Ms Jean
Khabra, Piara S


Cousins, Jim
Kilfoyle, Peter


Cox, Tom
Kirkwood, Archy


Cunningham, Jim (Cov'try SE)
Lestor, Miss Joan (Eccles)


Cunningham, Dr John
Livingstone, Ken


Cunningham, Ms R (Perth Kinross)
Lloyd, Tony (Stretf'd)


Dalyell, Tam
Lynne, Ms Liz


Davies, Chris (Littleborough)
McAllion, John


Davies, Denzil (Llanelli)
McAvoy, Thomas


Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)
McCartney, Ian (Makerf'ld)


Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H)
Macdonald, Calum


Denham, John
McFall, John


Dewar, Donald
McKelvey, William


Dixon, Don
Mackinlay, Andrew


Dobson, Frank
McLeish, Henry


Dowd, Jim
McMaster, Gordon


Dunwoody, Mrs Gwyneth
McNamara, Kevin


Eagle, Ms Angela
MacShane, Denis


Eastham, Ken
McWilliam, John


Etherington, Bill
Madden, Max


Evans, John (St Helens N)
Maddock, Mrs Diana


Fatchett, Derek
Mahon, Mrs Alice


Faulds, Andrew
Marek, Dr John


Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Marshall, David (Shettleston)


Fisher, Mark
Martin, Michael J (Springburn)


Flynn, Paul
Martlew, Eric


Foster, Derek
Maxton, John


Foster, Don (Bath)
Meale, Alan


Foulkes, George
Michael, Alun


Fraser, John
Michie, Bill (Shef'ld Heeley)


Fyfe, Mrs Maria
Miller, Andrew


Gapes, Mike
Mitchell, Austin (Gt Grimsby)


Garrett, John
Moonie, Dr Lewis


George, Bruce
Morgan, Rhodri


Gerrard, Neil
Morley, Elliot


Gilbert, Dr John
Morris, Alfred (Wy'nshawe)


Godman, Dr Norman A
Morris, John (Aberavon)


Godsiff, Roger
Mudie, George


Golding, Mrs Llin
Mullin, Chris


Gordon, Ms Mildred
Murphy, Paul


Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)
O'Brien, William (Normanton)


Grocott, Bruce
Olner, Bill


Gunnell, John
Orme, Stanley


Hall, Mike
Pearson, Ian


Hanson, David
Pendry, Tom


Hardy, Peter
Pickthall, Colin





Pike, Peter L
Steinberg, Gerry


Pope, Greg
Stevenson, George


Powell, Sir Ray (Ogmore)
Stott, Roger


Prentice, Mrs B (Lewisham E)
Strang, Dr Gavin


Prentice, Gordon (Pendle)
Straw, Jack


Primarolo, Ms Dawn
Sutcliffe, Gerry


Purchase, Ken
Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)


Quin, Ms Joyce
Taylor, John D (Strangf'd)


Radice, Giles
Taylor, Matthew (Truro)


Randall, Stuart
Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)


Raynsford, Nick
Timms, Stephen


Reid, Dr John
Tipping, Paddy


Rendel, David
Touhig, Don


Robertson, George (Hamilton)
Trickett, Jon


Robinson, Geoffrey (Cov'try NW)
Turner, Dennis


Rogers, Allan
Tyler, Paul


Rooker, Jeff
Walker, Sir Harold


Rooney, Terry
Wardell, Gareth (Gower)


Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)
Wareing, Robert N


Ruddock, Ms Joan
Watson, Mike


Sedgemore, Brian
Welsh, Andrew


Sheerman, Barry
Wicks, Malcolm


Sheldon, Robert
Wigley, Dafydd


Shore, Peter
Williams, Alan (Swansea W)


Short, Ms Clare
Williams, Alan W (Carmarthen)


Simpson, Alan
Wilson, Brian


Skinner, Dennis
Winnick, David


Smith, Chris (Islington S)
Wise, Mrs Audrey


Smith, Llew (Blaenau Gwent)
Worthington, Tony


Spearing, Nigel
Wright, Dr Tony


Spellar, John
Tellers for the Ayes:


Squire, Ms R (Dunfermline W)
Mr. Peter Hain and Mr. Jon Owen Jones.


Steel, Sir David





NOES


Ainsworth, Peter (E Surrey)
Carrington, Matthew


Aitken, Jonathan
Carttiss, Michael


Alison, Michael (Selby)
Cash, William


Allason, Rupert (Torbay)
Channon, Paul


Amess, David
Chapman, Sir Sydney


Arbuthnot, James
Churchill, Mr


Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)
Clappison, James


Ashby, David
Clark, Dr Michael (Rochf'd)


Atkins, Robert
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)


Atkinson, Peter (Hexham)
Clifton-Brown, Geoffrey


Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)
Coe, Sebastian


Banks, Matthew (Southport)
Congdon, David


Banks, Robert (Harrogate)
Conway, Derek


Bates, Michael
Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F)


Batiste, Spencer
Coombs, Simon (Swindon)


Bellingham, Henry
Cope, Sir John


Bendall, Vivian
Cormack, Sir Patrick


Beresford, Sir Paul
Couchman, James


Biffen, John
Cran, James


Body, Sir Richard
Currie, Mrs Edwina


Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Curry, David


Booth, Hartley
Davies, Quentin (Stamf'd)


Boswell, Tim
Deva, Nirj Joseph


Bowden, Sir Andrew
Devlin, Tim


Bowis, John
Dicks, Terry


Boyson, Sir Rhodes
Dorrell, Stephen


Brandreth, Gyles
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James


Brazier, Julian
Dover, Den


Bright, Sir Graham
Duncan, Alan


Brooke, Peter
Duncan Smith, Iain


Brown, Michael (Brigg Cl'thorpes)
Dunn, Bob


Browning, Mrs Angela
Dykes, Hugh


Bruce, Ian (S Dorset)
Eggar, Tim


Burns, Simon
Elletson, Harold


Burt, Alistair
Emery, Sir Peter


Butcher, John
Evans, Jonathan (Brecon)


Butler, Peter
Evans, Nigel (Ribble V)


Butterfill, John
Evans, Roger (Monmouth)


Carlisle, John (Luton N)
Evennett, David


Carlisle, Sir Kenneth (Linc'n)
Fabricant, Michael






Fenner, Dame Peggy
Knox, Sir David


Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)
Kynoch, George


Fishburn, Dudley
Lait, Mrs Jacqui


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Lamont, Norman


Forth, Eric
Lang, Ian


Fowler, Sir Norman
Lawrence, Sir Ivan


Fox, Dr Liam (Woodspring)
Legg, Barry


Fox, Sir Marcus (Shipley)
Leigh, Edward


Freeman, Roger
Lennox-Boyd, Sir Mark


French, Douglas
Lester, Sir Jim (Broxtowe)


Fry, Sir Peter
Lidington, David


Gale, Roger
Lilley, Peter


Gallie, Phil
Lloyd, Sir Peter (Fareham)


Gardiner, Sir George
Lord, Michael


Garnier, Edward
Luff, Peter


Gill, Christopher
Lyell, Sir Nicholas


Gillan, Mrs Cheryl
MacGregor, John


Goodlad, Alastair
MacKay, Andrew


Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles
Maclean, David


Gorman, Mrs Teresa
McLoughlin, Patrick


Gorst, Sir John
Madel, Sir David


Grant, Sir Anthony (SW Cambs)
Maitland, Lady Olga


Greenway, Harry (Eating N)
Malone, Gerald


Greenway, John (Ryedale)
Mans, Keith


Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)
Marland, Paul


Grylls, Sir Michael
Marlow, Tony


Gummer, John
Marshall, John (Hendon S)


Hague, William
Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)


Hamilton, Sir Archibald
Martin, David (Portsmouth S)


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Mawhinney, Dr Brian


Hampson, Dr Keith
Mellor, David


Hanley, Jeremy
Merchant, Piers


Hannam, Sir John
Mills, Iain


Hargreaves, Andrew
Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)


Haselhurst, Sir Alan
Mitchell, Sir David (NW Hants)


Hawkins, Nick
Moate, Sir Roger


Hawksley, Warren
Monro, Sir Hector


Hayes, Jerry
Needham, Richard


Heald, Oliver
Nelson, Anthony


Heath, Sir Edward
Neubert, Sir Michael


Heathcoat-Amory, David
Newton, Tony


Hendry, Charles
Nicholls, Patrick


Higgins, Sir Terence
Nicholson, David (Taunton)


Hill, Sir James (Southampton Test)
Norris, Steve


Horam, John
Oppenheim, Phillip


Hordern, Sir Peter
Paice, James


Howard, Michael
Patnick, Sir Irvine


Howell, Sir Ralph (N Norfolk)
Patten, John


Hughes, Robert G (Harrow W)
Pawsey, James


Hunt, David (Wirral W)
Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth


Hunt, Sir John (Ravensb'ne)
Pickles, Eric


Hunter, Andrew
Porter, David (Waveney)


Jack, Michael
Portillo, Michael


Jackson, Robert (Wantage)
Powell, William (Corby)


Jenkin, Bernard (Colchester N)
Rathbone, Tim


Jessel, Toby
Redwood, John


Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey
Renton, Tim


Jones, Robert B (W Herts)
Riddick, Graham


Key, Robert
Rifkind, Malcolm


King, Tom
Robathan, Andrew


Kirkhope, Timothy
Roberts, Sir Wyn


Knight, Mrs Angela (Erewash)
Robertson, Raymond S (Ab'd'n S)


Knight Greg (Derby N)
Robinson, Mark (Somerton)





Roe, Mrs Marion
Thomason, Roy


Rowe, Andrew
Thompson, Sir Donald (Calder V)


Rumbold, Dame Angela
Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)


Sackville, Tom
Thornton, Sir Malcolm


Sainsbury, Sir Timothy
Thurnham, Peter


Scott, Sir Nicholas
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Shaw, David (Dover)
Townsend, Cyril D (Bexl'yh'th)


Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)
Tracey, Richard


Shephard, Gillian
Tredinnick, David


Shepherd, Sir Colin (Heref'd)
Trend, Michael


Shersby, Sir Michael
Twinn, Dr Ian


Sims, Sir Roger
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Skeet, Sir Trevor
Viggers, Peter


Smith, Tim (Beaconsf'ld)
Waldegrave, William


Soames, Nicholas
Walker, Bill (N Tayside)


Speed, Sir Keith
Waller, Gary


Spencer, Sir Derek
Ward, John


Spicer, Sir Jim (W Dorset)
Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)


Spicer, Sir Michael (S Worcs)
Waterson, Nigel


Spink, Dr Robert
Watts, John


Spring, Richard
Wells, Bowen


Sproat, Iain
Whitney, Ray


Squire, Robin (Hornchurch)
Whittingdale, John


Stanley, Sir John
Widdecombe, Miss Ann


Steen, Anthony
Wiggin, Sir Jerry


Stephen, Michael
Wilkinson, John


Stewart, Allan
Willetts, David


Streeter, Gary
Wilshire, David


Sumberg, David
Winterton, Mrs Ann (Congleton)


Sweeney, Walter
Winterton, Nicholas (Macclesf'ld)


Sykes, John
Wolfson, Mark


Tapsell, Sir Peter
Yeo, Tim


Taylor, Ian (Esher)
Young, Sir George


Taylor, John M (Solihull)
Tellers for the Noes:


Taylor, Sir Teddy
Mr. Timothy Wood and Mr. Richard Ottaway.


Temple-Morris, Peter

Question accordingly negatived.

Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 30 (Questions on amendments), and agreed to.

MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House welcomes the substantial progress made by Her Majesty's Government in ensuring that the welfare state continues to be affordable by focusing help on those with genuine need or entitlement; agrees that Her Majesty's Government should continue to seek positive and imaginative ways of ensuring that the welfare state continues to be both effective and affordable; supports Her Majesty's Government in striving to make the administration of the welfare state as effective and efficient as possible; notes that the Labour leadership is now criticised even by its own supporters for being vague and ineffectual on welfare issues; condemns the Labour Party's readiness to criticise people who do think radically about social security; deplores the Labour Party's knee-jerk opposition to the improvement of the benefit delivery system; and opposes the Labour Party's expensive and irresponsible plans for a new means-tested system Pension Entitlement and a flexible decade of retirement.

Voluntary Sector

Mr. Alun Michael: I beg to move,
That this House welcomes and applauds the massive contribution made by the Voluntary Sector to the lives of individuals and communities throughout Britain and believes that it is the responsibility of Government to nurture the sector while respecting the independence of charities and voluntary organisations.
It is a great privilege to open this important debate, which gives us an opportunity to celebrate the contribution of the voluntary sector to British society. I use the word "celebrate" deliberately because of the extent and diversity of the voluntary sector, its capacity for long-term commitment and innovation, its almost infinite variety, from large national organisations to the smallest local community groups, the vast diversity of interests with which it deals, from issues that affect a small number of individuals to issues that affect everyone in British society directly or indirectly, and because the activities undertaken by groups of individuals in association is a vital element in society, and the act of volunteering in itself is an essential act of citizenship.
Even that summary is inadequate, for, although we are dealing today with the contribution of the voluntary sector to British society, it also makes an enormous contribution to international affairs, particularly in the relief of poverty and distress, and does the painstaking work of helping communities in many parts of the world to develop the ability to help themselves. It can be argued that this in itself is of benefit to British society, because it is an important element in our nation's citizenship of the world. That also applies to organisations such as Traidcraft, which allows people to make consumer choices that respect producers in the third world, but which has increasingly joined with commercial companies to develop social audit as a way of accounting to all the company stakeholders for its performance.
However, it is the contribution of the voluntary sector to British society that we celebrate this evening. When I was asked by my right hon. Friend the leader of the Labour party to undertake a review of the relationship between Government and the voluntary sector, I thought that I knew a bit about the voluntary sector, having more than 30 years' experience of community activity at local level, Welsh level and national level, as supplicant for money, in grant-making in local government and in a grant-making trust in the early days of the Prince's Trust. My experience is similar to that of many other hon. Members, starting off with involvement in voluntary organisations through family, and later becoming involved through chapel, through the Scout movement and in other ways.
My perspective has changed a little in recent times. I have had discussions in the past two years from national conferences to specialised meetings, from gatherings in every region of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to local meetings such as the one that I had yesterday in Peterborough, a recent one in Loughborough and a meeting of black community leaders in Nottingham. From all those contacts, I am now convinced that I knew far less than I thought and that no one can possibly know the whole sector.
At this point, I should like to pay tribute to the immense amount of work undertaken by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ms Coffey), who was appointed

by my right hon. Friend the leader of the Labour party to work with me on the consultation, who has also attended meetings up and down the country, and who has brought all her own experience and expertise to bear on listening and sharing ideas with the voluntary sector and working out how Government and the voluntary sector can best work together.
We deliberately refer in our motion tonight to the responsibilities of Government in nurturing the voluntary sector. It is important for Government to understand that they cannot and must not start off with a blueprint for the sector. The role of Government should be that of a careful gardener, caring and sensitive to the effects of its actions rather than those of a builder bolting together scaffolding to create a fixed and rigid structure. That distinction is important for those who have not been involved with the voluntary sector to understand.
It is also not enough to praise the sector or even to value it. We need to understand it as best we can and to make the decision-making of Government more positive and sensitive to the role of voluntary organisations, for the sector is not just useful, but essential, to the health of British society. In many areas, the voluntary sector is sensitive to specific communities such as inner cities or estates where the Church may be the only professionally-led organisation in the resident community. The voluntary sector's contribution to difficult situations is often crucial to the community and its health.
There is a key role for voluntary organisations in building up people's capacity to work as a community, to develop their personal skills as individuals and to develop a leadership capacity in the community. Having worked in such settings and having been involved in the training of volunteers, I never cease to be amazed at how such gifts are developed over time and, conversely, how we fail to recognise and nurture latent talent within the community that is often beyond the reach of statutory organisations and Government, but can be reached by independent voluntary organisations. That is recognised in Labour's "Road to the Manifesto" documents, in particular our belief that
Government does not have the answer to every problem; it must work in partnership with the private and voluntary sectors for the benefit of the public".
The voluntary sector is a key part of enabling people to
shape their own lives instead of them being shaped for them in Government.
One of the most important commitments made in "Road to the Manifesto" is the promise of real opportunities for those in the 18 to 25 age group. That must involve the voluntary sector, particularly where there is disillusionment over previous Government offerings and schemes. That is often particularly the case in specific communities, and we are opening a dialogue with the black voluntary sector in order to build bridges and lay foundations for success rather than making the mistake of funding for failure, as it has come to be called.
It is important to recognise the need to include all sections in society when we seek to nurture the voluntary sector. We have already recognised that many groups feel excluded or operate outside the traditional structures and umbrella organisations, important though they are and vital as their services to the voluntary sector have been


over the years. We need to find a diversity of ways of debating issues and listening to the voluntary sector. That is the purpose of a number of initiatives.

Mr. Alan Howarth: My hon. Friend rightly draws attention to the extremely important contribution that voluntary organisations of black people make to our society. Does he agree that there have been problems with the new approach to contracting that we have seen in recent years, with the emphasis on project funding? That approach has tended to be to the disadvantage of black voluntary organisations, which typically commit themselves to generic causes that do not easily fit into the project model.

Mr. Michael: My hon. Friend makes a good point, which is at the heart of the need for the sort of initiative that I am talking about. Many small, developing or new organisations find it difficult to cope with gaining access to structure funds, European money and major Government projects. Unless the infrastructure exists within the local community, many organisations will be accidentally excluded although their role is crucial.
With reference to my hon. Friend's point, we certainly need the support and involvement of black communities—people of Afro-Caribbean and Asian communities in inner cities and other districts—if access to opportunities to work and train are to hit the targets for those who need them most and if we are to rebuild a sense of community and inclusiveness. This point relates specifically to the initiatives that the leader of the Labour party, the shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) and others have put their hands to in seeking a positive commitment to the needs of those aged 18 to 25.

Dr. Norman A. Godman: Due to the local government structure in Northern Ireland, voluntary organisations play an important part in the development of community education, training and employment in both the communities there. The voluntary organisations play an essential role in bringing the two traditions together, especially in terms of community education. Surely they should have some input into the distribution of European social funds, especially in community employment and training.

Mr. Michael: My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is true that voluntary organisations can often, as in the case of Northern Ireland, make a significant contribution to bridging the gap between communities as well as supporting the infrastructure of a specific community. The situation in Northern Ireland is different, and we need to consider an example that involves the voluntary sector and the relevant Department of State achieving an agreement and compact on the way that they should treat each other. We need to consider that example of good practice.
The importance of building bridges and laying the foundations for success within all communities arid all elements in the voluntary sector has been strongly reinforced by the extremely helpful interventions of my two hon. Friends. I am pleased with the initial response to the dialogue, which is demanding, but important and

worth while. Government and local government must accept that the voluntary sector cannot always be a partner unless the infrastructure is nurtured. There are training and support needs that it is unwise to overlook when developing any strategy.
In recent years, there has been too much of an assumption that the voluntary sector can be stretched again and again, that core funding can be switched into project funding, that organisations can be told, again and again, to find tranches of matching finances. Such approaches have their place, but the infrastructure problems can be the greatest in the communities with the greatest need. Recognising that fact is essential for success—as in the examples that my hon. Friends the Members for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth) and for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) have just mentioned. Applying for European and other funds can be beyond the capacity of small local groups, but it is in the local community that the needs and contributions of such groups can be crucial.
The national lottery has introduced new money into the sector, but Government and local government need to ensure that the infrastructure exists in the local voluntary sector to enable the communities that most need help to apply for and use the money successfully. Dialogue will be a key part of our further round of meetings in each region and nation this autumn as we seek to find how best to turn principle into practice.
We must recognise that there is a special role for the voluntary sector in rural areas, where the problems, needs and potential solutions are different. Like the problems of rural crime, the needs of rural communities and the importance of the voluntary sector have been overlooked too often.
None of those points means that the Government have to be soft or woolly-minded in their approach; they mean that the Government cannot take decisions for the sector, but need to work with it to do the best for voluntary organisations and those they serve. It is not good enough for the Government to say, as one Minister did recently:
We value the voluntary sector—we want you to help us achieve our objectives.
The setting of objectives and the decisions on means need to occur together, in partnership.
It hardly gave the right signal when the Government shifted responsibility for the voluntary sector from one Government Department to another without the slightest discussion or consultation with the sector. The experts and civil servants were not asked and the move was undertaken without sensible consideration or planning. The move may not be the wrong one—like the Deakin commission, we believe that the jury is out, and the Department of National Heritage is currently on trial—but it was not the right way for the Government to act.
The Government took the right decision a few years ago when, reflecting a Labour decision, responsibility for charities in the voluntary sector was put in the hands of one Minister of State in the House of Commons—at that time, the competent and hard-working right hon. Member for Fareham (Sir P. Lloyd). It does not give the right signal for the response to this debate to be given by a Minister who is not responsible for the voluntary sector—an issue that is dealt with by his colleague, Lord Inglewood, the Under-Secretary of State in the House of Lords.

Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent): The hon. Gentleman might like to reflect on the fact that the voluntary services unit—the co-ordinating group in central Government—was at its most effective when it was linked to a Cabinet Minister with a budget of his own, and that a Labour Government determined that it should be transferred and downgraded to the Home Office.

Mr. Michael: I am surprised by the hon. Gentleman's contribution. I have practical experience of the work of the VSU on the ground. I worked in the youth service, with probation officers and with others. I remember the unit's effectiveness under the last Labour Government. The hon. Gentleman must have been visiting a different planet between 1974 and 1979. Many good initiatives were taken during that time.
It is a pity that this has not been followed by a burst of consultation and discussion by the Secretary of State and that she has not seen fit to take part in today's debate or even to listen to it. It is an omission on her part, and it is extremely disappointing. [Interruption.] The mumbling and groaning from the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) is irrelevant to that point.
The Government's approach stands in stark contrast to Labour's approach. We have examined the relationship between the Government and the voluntary sector. We are delighted that the sector—through the Deakin commission, which was established by the National Council of Voluntary Organisations—is independent of the Government. The independent commissions and working parties in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have been undertaking a basic review of the sector's future. The sector is reviewing its own future, which is an extremely positive development.
This work helps to set the agenda for partnership in Government, to use the title of our own consultative document. I pay tribute to the skill of Professor Nicholas Deakin in chairing the commission and in steering through a significant review of the work of the voluntary sector in England. It has helped and contributed to the thinking that has gone on in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I compliment the NCVO on its selection of Professor Deakin as chairman of the commission.
I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson) hopes to refer to the useful and constructive manifesto that was drawn up by the Wales Council for Voluntary Action. I have had the opportunity to discuss the manifesto with the council. In September, I will join my hon. Friend the Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) to have further discussions with the voluntary sector in Scotland. In both cases, there are overriding considerations, such as how a partnership approach is adopted by Government as a whole. However, there are specific concerns, not least the different legal issues that arise in Scotland, such as the inappropriate application of the English case law definition of a charity by the Inland Revenue. We need to be sensitive to those differences.
More generally, there is the question of how Government Departments can act consistently and together, rather than expect the voluntary sector to fit in with the rigid requirements of departmental structures. We are looking at this across Labour team boundaries. For example, I shall be meeting children's charities with my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn), who deals with children's issues in the health team, and

with my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle), the shadow Minister for youth in the education team, to discuss how the Government and the voluntary sector can co-operate much more effectively on issues affecting children and young people, including how we deal with offending by young people. We are doing this across the boundaries of the teams. In the future, we should encourage Departments to work across boundaries—there should be a greater flexibility which respects the nature of the voluntary sector and the issues with which it is trying to deal.
A number of other issues are being dealt with by my colleagues. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) has given a commitment to easing the barriers to volunteering on those who are unemployed or on benefit. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn has outlined a local partnership approach to reducing crime and to tackling its causes, particularly in relation to youth crime, an area in which I have a great personal interest. The voluntary sector, local community groups, local government and the police should all have the opportunity to be involved.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) has been undertaking a major review of the lottery, including its impact on the voluntary sector and the way in which funds that are raised are distributed. That work will make a significant contribution to developing coherent thought on the positive outcomes of the lottery. My hon. Friend the Member for Walton, the shadow Minister for youth, has stressed the central role of the voluntary youth service and of voluntary youth organisations generally in the future of the youth service. This is extremely important, especially in view of the way that the youth service has been under attack and diminished by the Government in recent years.
I have referred to the initiative taken by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) and a number of my hon. Friends on attacking and tackling the needs of the 18-to-25 age group. In each of these, as in the general thrust of policy, we come back to the matter of partnership.
"Partnership" is an easy word to use. Who is against co-operation and partnership? However, it is not that easy. Any partnership is tough, whether between individuals or between organisations. The nurturing of a partnership involves a long-term commitment on the part of the Government. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield has said that we should "say what we mean and mean what we say". We need to work out what "partnership" means and what mechanisms are needed to make it happen. That was firmly in mind when the Labour party, in clause IV, made the unique commitment to co-operation and partnership with the voluntary sector.
The approach of the Government to building partnership needs to be positive. However, it was not a Labour party member or someone from the voluntary sector who made this point most strongly, but a business man who was appointed to a quango by the Government. He said to me:
 "I can't understand the Government's approach to partnership. You can't go into a partnership with your mind made up, telling others what you want out of it. That wouldn't be accepted in business. You have to be prepared to work it out together.
That is the problem with applying a strict contract culture to the voluntary sector. If there is a top-down approach, as is too often the case, if voluntary


organisations are seen by the Government as little different to a group of private companies that are bidding for contracts, then it is not a partnership—it is the strong binding the weak; it does not have the creative strength of a genuine partnership.
This is a real worry, as I have seen a letter from a district auditor telling a local authority that all its relationships with the voluntary sector—including the giving of small grants—should be imbued with the contract culture. That attitude could undermine the relationship between the voluntary sector and local government, which is of crucial importance to local communities. In recent years, we have understood the tremendous pressures that there have been on local government—with the cuts in the finances available to local government, there has been pressure on the way in which they have reached partnership agreements and supplied grants to local voluntary organisations. That is bound to lead to pressure and to misunderstandings.
During the course of our regional meetings last September and October, I was reassured to find that, to a great extent, the voluntary sector and local government regarded each other as partners in adversity under the Government. It is an area of difficulty, but at least in some areas there have been real efforts to change it back to a positive relationship. I know that there were difficulties in the Manchester area. Manchester city council members specifically appointed a working party, chaired by the chair of social services, to look at how to create a new partnership with the voluntary sector in that city. I believe that positive changes have been made.
There have been various initiatives on the part of a variety of Labour authorities—from Islwyn to North Tyneside—in finding new ways of doing things positively in partnership with local authorities. Other authorities, including some in London and Nottinghamshire, for instance, have opened the books to the voluntary sector to try to share the problems faced by local government to see how to overcome problems and how best to work together.
Those proposals are very positive, but we need to ensure that the Government do not force people in local government or agencies to spend time chasing money. It is possible for a huge amount of paperwork to be generated which takes the key staff of small organisations away from the task of running the organisations—from working with the local community and people who need their services and concentrating on quality of service—and involves them in the continual paper chase to try to ensure that money is there for the following year.
Like many of my hon. Friends, I have had experience of that difficulty and it often undermines the quality of work. That problem is also caused by the move from core funding to a purely project-based approach. We need a strategic approach which recognises that voluntary organisations have to be healthy if they are to be able to respond to the challenges of changing society and to act as partners with government in meeting those challenges.
Certainly there has been a positive response to the statements of principle in our consultative document, published by the Labour party earlier this year, and a series of detailed and positive contributions have been received from a whole range of organisations. We are now digesting those contributions. We will consider the mechanisms of government and how to turn principle into

practice. We need to find a way to define the relationship between Government and the voluntary sector, including agencies of Government and local government, to carry our principles through in practice to develop the partnership approach that I have mentioned.
One way to do that—to use language that is becoming common in Government—is to establish a compact between Government and the voluntary sector and to seek to replicate that in relevant detail within Government Departments and other agencies. The Deakin commission has also stressed the positive value of such an approach and mentioned the need for a compact in its recommendations.
I have had an opportunity to consider the compact in the strategic document drawn up by voluntary organisations and the Northern Ireland Office, to which I referred earlier. Of course, Northern Ireland has a different history and faces different challenges, but we should learn from that experience in, for instance, setting out how community care issues should be dealt with and the way in which the sector and Government should treat each other. There has been too ready an expectation by the Government that volunteers, carers in the family and in the community and the voluntary sector generally will pick up the pieces and fill the gaps. Often they do so, but they do so with resentment, because the Government have not worked with them as a partner to identify and then meet public need.
I commend the way that the three local government associations in England and Wales have worked with the voluntary sector to draw up guidelines on, for instance, ensuring that charitable money is not used to subsidise the public purse when a local authority seeks to deliver services through voluntary organisations. It is to be hoped that the new single local government association will build on those foundations. Central Government should adopt a similar approach, encourage their agencies to do so and reflect what has been done by the local government associations. I note that the latest Association of Metropolitan Authorities publication contains further discussion about quality and how to introduce quality into partnerships. It is promising that such issues are being pursued by local government.
As I hope I am making clear, partnership is not an excuse for inefficiency. As the business man I mentioned said, we need to work together. When the voluntary sector uses public money, we should seek ways to measure performance—together. We will encourage the Audit Commission to consider the ways in which partners in the voluntary sector and in government, locally and nationally, can set targets, minimise bureaucracy and find performance indicators that reflect their joint performance in meeting the real needs of the community.
The need for accountability and effectiveness is accepted by the voluntary organisations, which have often been pioneers in effective management, as they have in so many areas. Examples of good practice need to be shared, as with the Central Council for Jewish Community Services, whose imaginative appointment of Dr. Eric Livingstone—who is qualified in medicine and in the law—as an ombudsman has allowed independent resolution of complaints about and between different organisations.
In a meeting yesterday, the voluntary sector representative, from a group concerned with mental health, said that we need to challenge the voluntary sector.


It is the greatest challenge of all to be taken seriously, and we will look for value for money and for accountability to those who are served—when service to a group or community is the issue—but we will seek ways to undertake the evaluation together and to share both the purposes and the means of improving performance. The way in which the Audit Commission has increasingly worked with local government rather than outside it, addressing it as a partner instead of as a separate group of organisations, shows that that approach could work well in the overlap between Government, local government and the voluntary sector.
We will ensure that those principles, and the others set out in our document that I do not have time to detail tonight, will be put into effect across government under the oversight of ministerial task force, chaired by a senior Cabinet Minister. I welcome the arrival of Ministers on the road to Damascus, if the Government support our motion tonight, but I warn them that they are signing up to a tough approach. The voluntary sector needs to be helped to expand and develop, and it needs to be treated as a partner, or rather as a disparate group of partners with differing needs and contributions, but its independence also needs to be respected and, indeed, celebrated.
Some have suggested that the voice of charities should be stilled. Some Conservatives believe that charities should not bite the hand that feeds them, as though they were dependent puppies to be humoured. A similar conclusion was suggested by the Centris report, but we believe that such an approach is wrong in principle. In a democratic society, how can Government seek to silence a voluntary organisation working for the good of principles set out in charitable objects, if paid lobbying by those who have a commercial interest continues unabated?
If the Alzheimer's Disease Society cannot speak for sufferers and their carers, who can? Yet who best to provide targeted services on behalf of government? I do not seek to be specific about one society, but the example makes the point better than any amount of philosophical analysis. Our concern is given point and poignancy by the experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Washington (Mr. Boyes). I hope that the Minister will endorse the views that I have expressed on that point when he speaks.
I have not been able even to scratch the surface of the contribution made by the voluntary sector, or to list the issues that we need to address, far less to expand on the answers. For instance, I have not had time to discuss trusteeship, charity law or the definition of charity, which the Deakin commission suggested that the Government should try to tidy up. Incidentally, it will not pay to be too tidy, nor would the Government would be wise to embark alone on the task of writing a new definition, which might look simple but might unexpectedly cause a small earthquake in Peru. Each of those topics, and many more, deserve a full debate to themselves. However, I hope that I have at least indicated Labour's approach and the strength of our commitment.
I hope that the Minister will tell us something about the Government's approach that is of value to the voluntary sector. I hope that we shall hear an agenda for action, but I doubt it. The voluntary sector made a big commitment to the "Make a Difference" working party, for instance, and felt that the response from the Government failed to

match its commitment and lacked enthusiasm. When we asked for documents that set out the Government's commitment to "think voluntary", my researcher met blank incomprehension across Departments until at last one small leaflet was found, which an official from the Department of National Heritage said was the only publication about that initiative.
The Government must do better. Volunteering is an essential element of citizenship, and access and recognition must be offered to those in work and out of work alike who provide voluntary activity. That can be done, as the Prince's Trust Youth Volunteers have recognised. The Government need to encourage and show commitment to volunteering by their employees and to exchanges, so that officials and Ministers develop the better understanding that is necessary for partnership. The Government should also encourage the private sector in the initiatives that have been taken by Business in the Community and many individual companies.
Above all, the contribution of the voluntary sector is crucial to the renewal of civil society and to restoring the sense of community that is at the heart of Labour's project. That has been recognised personally by the leader of the Labour party and the partnership approach is not only in the party's constitution, but it is at the heart of the road to the manifesto process, as Labour plans for government.
In proposing the motion tonight, we are setting on the record, in the House of Commons, our recognition of the massive contribution by the voluntary sector to the lives of individuals and communities throughout Britain and of the fact that the potential is even greater. We are acknowledging that the Government need the voluntary sector and accepting our responsibilities as a partner that we can look forward to fulfilling in government. We are recognising the responsibility of government to nurture the sector while respecting the independent charities and voluntary organisations.
It is a privilege and an honour to introduce the motion on behalf of the Opposition.

The Minister of State, Department of National Heritage (Mr. Iain Sproat): I am pleased to respond to the motion and to set out the Government's policies in relation to the voluntary sector, just as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I are pleased to have taken on responsibility recently for Government policy on volunteering, the voluntary sector, the National Lottery Charities Board, charities legislation and community development.
The themes that I wish to bring out this evening are both the continuity of the Government's commitment to volunteering and the voluntary sector, and the change and development signalled by the move of responsibility for voluntary sector matters to my Department.
I shall begin by setting out what I understand the voluntary sector and volunteering to be about. It is a large sector: depending on definitions, there are perhaps 400,000 to 700,000 voluntary organisations in the United Kingdom. The sector includes about 180,000 charities in England and Wales registered with the Charity Commission. As the House will be aware, there is a wide range of voluntary organisations that do not meet the legal test necessary for charitable status.
Voluntary organisations are diverse, covering such areas as health, disability, housing, education and the environment. They are independent and they are very important. Voluntary organisations can often be far more effective and sensitive than Government at responding to needs. They may be far better than Government at injecting elements of user-involvement in the provision of services.
Voluntary organisations are a vital part of the national landscape. This is not mere hyperbole. To check the truth of the statement, we have to think only of a few of those organisations that are now more than a century old: the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the Royal National Institute for the Blind, the British Red Cross, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Salvation Army and the National Trust.
Equally important are the myriad of small local voluntary bodies, which are such a force for good in communities throughout the country. Indeed, they are perhaps more typical of the voluntary sector than are the well-known national charities. The great majority of charities have an income of less than £10,000 a year.
I turn specifically to the role of the Department of National Heritage. My Department seeks to promote the health of the voluntary sector and to encourage volunteering. It seeks, although one might quibble with the terminology, to nurture—to use the word that the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) properly and effectively employed—the sector.
We have a broad-ranging programme of work, which I shall outline. It includes the promotion of volunteering, support of voluntary organisations by means of grants to membership, training and advice bodies, co-ordination of policy within Government through the ministerial group on volunteering and the voluntary sector, responsibilities in relation to the legal framework within which charities operate, and the national lottery, which is an unprecedented source of new funds for voluntary organisations. I shall take each responsibility in turn.
The Government's aim is to promote volunteering as an activity that can involve anyone and everyone in his or her community. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister's "Make a Difference" initiative, begun in 1994, brought together a team from the public, corporate and voluntary sectors to draw up a strategy to demonstrate that volunteering is a worthwhile activity, and to suggest how volunteering opportunities might be made available for all those who wished to be involved.
After consultation with more than 300 organisations, the "Make a Difference" team brought out a report entitled "An Outline Volunteering Strategy for the UK" in June 1995. The report contained 81 recommendations addressed to the Government, to employers and to organisations that involve volunteers. The Government responded by announcing a package of measures worth £20 million over three years.
The crux of the team's strategy was the need to establish effective local centres to match volunteers with opportunities to volunteer. In many parts of the country, that strategy already existed through the network of locally funded volunteer bureaux, but in many other parts it did not. We have taken action on this by funding nearly 40 new local volunteer development agencies in areas where there was previously no such organisation. Their

function is to increase awareness of volunteering and to promote opportunities to volunteer by working closely with a wide range of organisations, including schools, health authorities and local businesses, as well as voluntary organisations.
The aim is that, by the end of the three years, there will be coverage throughout England. There has been a similar response in the other parts of the United Kingdom. A national helpline has also been set up, so that volunteers can get information from wherever they are in the country for the price of a local call.
The "Make a Difference" team also drew attention to the fact that the young and old people are less likely to volunteer than those in the middle age groups. The strategy highlighted the need to encourage the involvement of the young and the older groups. The Government's programme includes challenge grants to encourage new and effective volunteering opportunities for both these age groups. Outstanding examples of organisations involving volunteers in the community, and of individual commitment to volunteering, are recognised by the Whitbread "Make a Difference" volunteering awards.
The Government's funding policy reflects the diversity of voluntary organisations and seeks to provide support that can reach across all parts of the sector, reaching both traditional, large organisations and small informal groups in cities, towns and villages throughout the land.

Dr. Godman: I readily acknowledge the Minister's responsibility, but may I remind him that the Finance Act 1987 introduced a payroll-giving scheme, which allows employees to make a tax-free donation or donations to charities up to a maximum of £1,200 per annum? Does the Minister agree that the time has come to increase the limit to, say, £2,400 per annum?

Mr. Sproat: The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. It is certainly one that my Department will be considering in the context of the Deakin report. I shall be mentioning gift aid and payroll giving, which I take seriously.
I was saying that both large traditional organisations and small informal groups are targets in encouraging volunteering. By way of example, my Department funds the Women's Royal Voluntary Service, a large traditional voluntary organisation whose 140,000 volunteers carry out a vital role within the community delivering meals on wheels, serving in hospital shops and helping at the scenes of emergencies.
At the other end of the scale, the Department funds the national bodies that support the work of the local volunteer bureaux and councils for voluntary service, and in this way contributes to the welfare of thousands of local voluntary organisations. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I remain committed to continuing that support.
It is not only through grants that the Government channels financial support to the voluntary sector. Direct support from the tax system is also important. Last year, charities received the benefit of tax concessions worth about £1.5 billion, which constituted vital help to their work.
The Government have made it easier for individuals and companies to give to charity in tax-efficient ways. The hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow


(Dr. Godman) mentioned payroll giving, which the Government introduced, along with gift aid, as powerful supports both to charities and to those who give to charity. It is the value of these programmes and tax concessions, as well as the legitimate interest of the public in how charities spend the money that they are given, that makes it so important that charities are accountable.

Mr. Rowe: One of the most valuable innovations has been the give-as-you-earn scheme. However, the advance of the scheme has somewhat disappointed its devotees. Perhaps my hon. Friend will either assure me that I am out of date or give an assurance that the Department of which he is such a shining light will do everything that it can to extend and improve the scheme.

Mr. Sproat: My hon. Friend is certainly not out of date. He has raised a matter that we shall be considering closely. The Deakin report, to which I shall come, provides us with an opportunity to consider a range of interlocking subjects applying to charitable giving and volunteering in general.
Another element of our work is the ministerial group on volunteering and the voluntary sector, which is chaired by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for National Heritage. That group brings together at ministerial level representatives of the many Departments with an interest in voluntary organisations, to try to ensure that policies and action are consistent—not standardised—and that Departments work well with voluntary organisations and volunteers.
The Deakin report was published on 8 July. The work of the Deakin commission was concerned with England only. Equivalent exercises have taken, or are taking, place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The commission took a wide range of evidence, and produced a thoughtful report, which has important messages for many people associated with voluntary organisations and volunteering.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: It might be appropriate to mention that the Minister's former Aberdeenshire colleague, Colin Mitchell, died on Saturday. He was chairman of the Halo trust, an admirable charity that indulges in the dangerous work of raising land mines.
Will the Minister give an undertaking that that committee will meet the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, which is worried about the effects of the reorganisation of local government and it calculates that it is £10 million down as a result of the lottery? Will the appropriate body meet it and talk seriously?

Mr. Sproat: I was sad to see that Lieutenant Colonel Colin Mitchell, a former Member of the House, died at the weekend. I am sure that the whole House would wish to join in the hon. Gentleman's tribute, or implied tribute.
As for meeting the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, I cannot give any commitment on behalf of my right hon. Friend, but the hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable request, which I will pass on to my right hon. Friend with the expectation that she will be glad to fulfil it.
My right hon. Friend and I will be looking closely at the recommendations of the Deakin report on behalf of the Government. As I told my hon. Friend the Member

for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe), it will give us a chance to consider the whole area of charities, volunteering, and volunteers who are part of the voluntary sector and those who are not. We take the matter extremely seriously, and I am glad that, just after my Department has taken over responsibility for that, we have the chance to consider a report which has studied the matter so thoroughly.
I come now to the national lottery. Any debate on the voluntary sector in Britain must deal with the impact of the national lottery. The lottery has provided charities and voluntary organisations with a major new opportunity. As the House well knows, charities and voluntary organisations are one of the five specific areas of good causes supported by lottery funds.
The National Lottery Charities Board has already awarded £318 million to more than 4,000 organisations, involved in a wide variety of worthy causes. But it is important to realise that the board is not the only source of lottery funds for charities and voluntary organisations.
More than half the awards made so far by the other distributing bodies—the Sports Council, the Arts Council, the National Heritage Memorial Fund—are to voluntary organisations working in sport, the arts and heritage. It is estimated that more than £800 million from the first full year alone of lottery ticket sales will go to charities and voluntary organisations.

Mr. Michael: The Minister makes a fair point about the direction of moneys, but will he acknowledge my point about the infrastructure needs and the difficulty of making detailed applications unless organisations have large resources, and that there is an issue there to be addressed?

Mr. Sproat: That is an extremely important issue. It applies to charities and small sports organisations which may wish to fund the purchase of kit and so on. Again, we shall consider that in the context of the Deakin report, but we are also considering it with regard to all the distributors of lottery funds.
It is certain that the national lottery has made a very positive contribution to the income of charities, but I come now to the difficult question whether the lottery has had a negative or positive effect on other aspects of voluntary organisations' income.

Mr. Dalyell: That is very important.

Mr. Sproat: It is.
We should face that fact squarely. The Conservative party has no interest in pretending that things are other than they are—nor, I am sure, do the Opposition. That is matter that we must consider. It was extremely difficult to gauge the effect in advance. The House realised that there was a serious problem here. It was decided that part of the lottery moneys should be given to charities in the first place, because it was predicted that they might find things more difficult as a result of the lottery.
The House will be aware that that was a concern of a number of charities and voluntary organisations when the lottery legislation was being debated. The Government responded by giving a commitment to monitor the incomes of such organisations following the introduction of the lottery.
The issue of charities' income is complex and uncertain. Charities and voluntary organisations are diverse, in terms of the size of individual organisations, their aims and objectives, and the means by which they are funded. Research in that area has to be equally sophisticated if it is to capture reliable information and allow reasonable conclusions to be drawn from it. We worked with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, and its sister bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, in planning the research. We announced the research last October, and it is being carried out on two fronts.
The main and more important element of the research will look at income trends. That involves analysing the accounts of more than 7,000 charities and voluntary bodies throughout the United Kingdom, and will cover a period from 1991 to 1992—three years before the introduction of the lottery—to 1996–97, the second full year after its introduction.
The data are being prepared by an independent company, and the work began in the new year. It will analyse changes in all sorts of income—donations, legacies, sales, investments and so on. That is inevitably a long-term study, and results so far have merely, but usefully, revealed trends in income in the period leading up to the introduction of the lottery, thus providing a benchmark from which any changes can be measured. Next year, we will have available analysis of the results of the first full year following the introduction of the lottery, with full results of the research available in 1998.
The other, and secondary aspect, of the research involves considering the results of a number of surveys which have been carried out into public giving and charities' income. It uses data from surveys such as the family expenditure survey and those carried out for the National Council for Voluntary Organisations by national opinion polls. That aspect of the research will inevitably be less definitive, as samples are smaller, and in general it will rely on secondary sources of information—in many cases, people's recollections of their pattern of giving, rather than on an examination of charities' accounts.
Some charities have certainly reported a fall in income since the introduction of the lottery. For example, Alexandra Rose day reported that the proceeds of its flag day in 1995 were 12 per cent. lower than in 1994. Others, however, are reporting an increase. For example, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children publicly reported an increase of £2.2 million on an income of about £25 million in voluntary donations in 1995. Still other organisations have reported an increase, but do not wish to publicise that fact too widely in case it has a damaging effect on their future fund-raising.
The picture is thus a mixed one, and is further complicated by the fact that charitable income may be affected by many factors, of which the lottery is, at most, just one. They range from poor weather on a flag day to the growth of Sunday trading. Fewer people may concentrate their shopping on a Saturday, as they traditionally did, and may now shop on a Sunday. Yet people making street collections still tend to go for the Saturday crowds, which are lower. I give that as an example of the complicated reasons why donations may fall.

Mrs. Anne Campbell: Does the Minister accept that the family expenditure survey, although an excellent document in itself, is not designed to collect information about voluntary contributions to charities and voluntary organisations? In fact, it was quite inaccurate when it tried to estimate the amount that people spent on national lottery tickets, so it does not seem to me to be a very reliable source of estimating how much people spend on charity.

Mr. Sproat: The hon. Lady reinforces the main point that I was trying to make: although we take surveys as evidence, we build into our calculations the fact that those surveys are not always set up to calculate the amount, as the hon. Lady quite rightly said of the family expenditure survey, and in other surveys people remember giving more or less to charities, which then turns out not to be apparent from the income of the charity itself.
The hon. Lady is quite right to emphasise that it is difficult to get accurate information. That is why we are trying, by going back in our analysis to 1991–92, to get a proper benchmark in the years before the lottery, and then to get proper benchmarks on what is received after the lottery has been going for a full year, two full years, and to publish it. The House may then make its own decision on what it thinks is the evidence before it and the consequences that that evidence would appear to show.
As a further example of the genuine difficulties in interpreting surveys, the NOP survey, commissioned by the NCVO, suggested that the number of people donating to charities fell from 81 per cent. of respondents to 70 per cent. after the introduction of the lottery. On the other hand, the overall sums given did not decline in the same period, which suggests that those who are giving are giving more.
Furthermore, figures from the annual family expenditure survey, which the hon. Lady mentioned, suggest that the number of households giving to charities has in fact remained pretty stable—it has neither gone up nor down since 1993. We have to take the evidence and place on it what judgment we think is suitable.
It is thoroughly unclear whether, or by how much, charities' incomes have changed since the introduction of the lottery. It is even less clear what might have caused any change. After all, any new call on disposable income, including but not limited to the national lottery, could have some effect on charitable donations. The causes will remain an issue of continuing debate, but, once the results of the survey of charities' income are available, the facts of any change will be clear, even if the reasons are not necessarily clear.
The last important area of my Department's responsibilities that I shall describe is in relation to charities legislation and the Charity Commission, which supports and supervises charities in England and Wales. Charities are devoted to the public interest, and accordingly, have a privileged status and receive particular benefits, including tax relief, as I mentioned earlier.
The public support charities generously. Public confidence in them is therefore vital. The Deakin report has a number of important recommendations about the law on charities, and on management and standards. These will obviously need to be considered carefully. At this stage, all I wish to say is that the Government


fully support the Deakin committee's view that the legal framework must be appropriate for the modern world and the role that charities play in it, and we shall consider with great care what Deakin has to say on the need for reform.
Public confidence depends on donors knowing that the money that they give is put to good use and for the purposes for which they give it. The parts of the Deakin report devoted to improving management and standards in charities will no doubt be taken to heart by voluntary organisations. The Deakin report has also confirmed the need for an effective independent body to oversee the charitable sector. That, of course, is the responsibility of the Charity Commission.
My right hon. Friend's responsibility is for the appointment of the charity commissioners, who are accountable to her for the overall efficiency of the commission. The commissioners are, however, independently responsible for their operational and policy decisions, and answerable to the courts.
Major reforms to the law regulating charities and the commission were contained in the Charities Act 1992, much of which was consolidated in the Charities Act 1993. Both Acts updated the powers of the Charity Commission—for example, to conduct investigations and to protect charitable property—and updated the requirements on charities—for example, by introducing a new charity accounting framework. That framework came into force on 1 March this year, effectively completing the implementation phase of the reforms.
It is important that charities should be accountable. Abuse is, fortunately, rare, but it must be tackled effectively, as must failures of administration. The monitoring framework set up by the 1993 Act seeks to achieve that, and it aims to do so without imposing unnecessary burdens on charities. The deregulation task force on charities and voluntary organisations made a significant contribution in helping to get that balance right.
Recommendations from the deregulation task force that were accepted by Ministers included the creation of a new light-touch regime for charities with income or expenditure of £10,000 or less—so that in general they are not required to submit annual reports or accounts to the Charity Commission, or to have their accounts audited or independently examined. For larger charities, the income or expenditure level above which accounts have to be audited was raised from £100,000 to £250,000.
To enable it to fulfil its new role under the 1993 Act, the Charity Commission has been undergoing its own transformation under the direction of the chief charity commissioner. The commission has progressively built up its support and advisory role to charities, and is putting in place new monitoring arrangements. Its investigative powers have been strengthened, and it has enhanced its policy division so that it can play a greater role in developing issues affecting the charitable sector as a whole. This all amounts to a significant modernisation of the commission's role.

Mr. Michael: I get the impression that the Minister is moving away from the Deakin report. He referred to the recommendations of the report, which were directed at a variety of organisations, including the Charity

Commission and many organisations in the voluntary sector. The first set of recommendations were to central Government. Will the Minister say a little about the Government's response to those recommendations—specifically those directed to the Minister and his Department?

Mr. Sproat: Certainly. The hon. Gentleman is quite right. The whole concept of the concordat is central to one of the passages in Deakin, but we would like to consider it in more detail, for the simple reason that it is a very important recommendation.
It is also a very difficult recommendation. It is one thing to say that the Government must sign, but with whom in the voluntary and charitable sector would the Government sign? Although I am absolutely not rejecting the idea, we need to examine it closely. It is important to get things right in principle, and then to translate them into practice. That is what we want to do. We received the report only on 8 July, but we will look at that point, as well as the point about standards of management and accountability.
We are strongly aware of the importance of voluntary organisations and volunteering. A recent study by the volunteer centre of volunteering in eight European countries suggested that volunteering in the UK was significantly higher than in all the other parts of Europe surveyed—51 per cent. in the UK, as against 35 per cent. in Holland and 19 per cent. in France. The figures on individual charitable giving tell a similar story, with private giving accounting for 12 per cent. of charitable income in the UK, as against 7 per cent. in France and 4 per cent. in Germany.
Those are traditions that my right hon. Friend and I wish to foster. Furthermore, in the words of the motion, we accept the responsibility
to nurture the sector while respecting the independence of charities and voluntary organisations.

Mr. David Hanson: I very much welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on the voluntary sector, because it is a rare opportunity for the House to consider this issue.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) and for Stockport (Ms Coffey) for their sterling efforts in raising the issue of the voluntary sector in the Labour party and throughout the country. Without being too sycophantic, I praise my right hon. Friend the leader of the Labour party for initiating the debate, because it is important that the Labour party involves itself in the voluntary sector, because, traditionally, many people outside the Labour party have not seen the party as being central to the voluntary sector. That is changing. It was never really the case that the Labour party was not involved in the voluntary sector. The consultation itself has involved some 2,000 people giving their views to the Labour party about the future of the voluntary sector.
I chaired the consultation session that we held in north Wales, largely because, as well as being the local Member of Parliament, for 10 years before I was elected I worked in the voluntary sector as a regional and a national officer with the Spastics Society, and later as a director of a drug abuse charity. I feel that for too long the Labour party has


allowed the Conservative party to occupy the high ground, given that Labour has been deeply involved in the voluntary sector at local level and is now developing a policy for the future.
The two parties differ on that—on the approach that should be adopted to the future development of the sector. If we all look at our constituencies, we will see the benefits of voluntary sector activity. For instance, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution is stationed in my constituency. Then there is Amnesty International, which campaigns for justice and fairness throughout the world. There are playgroups, organising play activities for young people; Oxfam, with its shops and campaigning activities; Crossroads, which provides support for carers; the cancer support organisations, the credit unions, the Women's Royal Voluntary Service, the citizens advice bureaux and Barnardo's. Every constituency contains many groups of that kind.
I am not referring only to traditional groups and major charities. Only last Friday, I opened a revitalised chapel in a small village in my constituency which had been built again, brick by brick, by a voluntary organisation that wanted to develop the environment. I never fail to be amazed at the level of support that there is for the voluntary sector and the principle of volunteering, and I note that members of the Labour party have been involved, actively and locally, in every activity in my constituency that I have mentioned so far.
The voluntary sector in Wales is a major source of activity and benefit. Many Welsh Members of Parliament recently received a copy of the manifesto of the Wales Council for Voluntary Action, which clearly demonstrates the amount of voluntary activity currently undertaken in Wales. The citizens advice bureaux, for instance, currently provide 400,000 consultations in Wales each year. The volunteer bureaux recruit 8,000 new volunteers per annum. Pre-school play groups currently support 48,000 children. The housing association movement—which has not been mentioned so far—currently provides 46,000 dwellings for 75,000 people. Voluntary organisations in Wales own 177,000 acres of land, and own and manage 230 miles of coastline.
As has been said, there are 22,000 voluntary organisations in Wales, and staff value is estimated at some £2 billion a year in terms of the salary that staff would require if they took paid work. The voluntary sector provides 12,000 jobs in Wales, and raises £600 million in cash each year. It is a major source of activity, and it is important to our local community. People become involved in the sector because it gives voice to new and unrecognised needs—a voice that can change and raise public awareness. It provides new ways of meeting society's requirements, and enables people to participate in public life and fulfil the civic duty that their community demands. It also allows volunteers to develop skills and experience that will lead to personal fulfilment and, we hope, improve many people's employment prospects.
Despite the importance of the voluntary sector, I believe that the two parties have very different approaches to it. I do not wish to be churlish to the Minister, but I feel that there are problems to be dealt with. They are wide-ranging, but I think that many voluntary organisations in Wales and elsewhere agree that they should be addressed.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth mentioned the "contract culture". The state seems increasingly to be trying to determine what voluntary organisations do by arranging for funding to follow contracts. We should also examine the campaigning roles of voluntary organisations. There is currently not quite a disdain, but a frowning on some campaigning work. My hon. Friend mentioned biting the hand that feeds voluntary organisations. There is concern about the level of campaigning activity—activity that, in my view, is vital to the voluntary sector. If the voluntary sector does not represent service users who are in need, often no one will.
The question of core funding also needs to be addressed. Many voluntary organisations—such as the one of which I was a director before I became a Member of Parliament—depend on such funding to undertake the activities that they perform so well. It is neither attractive nor interesting to campaign for photocopying facilities, secretarial support or help with the cost of telephone lines or rental payments in fund-raising, but such things are important to the success of voluntary agencies and their ability to meet the needs of their communities. We should stress the need to maintain and develop long-term core funding.
The Government's attitude to value-added tax impinges greatly on the voluntary sector, which still cannot claim back VAT on much of its expenditure. The fact that voluntary agencies must pay VAT on goods up front hits them hard. I do not want to be too disdainful of the Government's approach, but it is felt that, in many quarters, voluntary activity may be seen as a substitute for Government action, as opposed to an element in a partnership. That attitude needs to be challenged.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth said, and as the motion suggests, it is the job of Government to nurture the voluntary sector and to encourage voluntary activity. Those roles demand a re-think of the Government's approach, which I think Labour can genuinely undertake. We need to recognise the worth and value of voluntary organisations, and their commitment to genuine participation and involvement with Government and local authorities. I believe that Government's job is to establish a proper framework for that relationship to develop.
A number of aspects need to be improved, and the Welsh voluntary sector has pressed for such improvement. For instance, we should involve the voluntary sector more in consultation about the Government's activities. The sector can represent service users; it can represent those who are at the sharp end of Government policies, and it can assess the impact of those policies on the groups that it represents.
We should also consider the ways in which Government can encourage recognition of the importance of training, and of the ability of the voluntary sector to develop individuals as part of the encouragement of quality that the Government should be undertaking. Perhaps, when he replies to the debate, the Minister will tell us whether the Government are considering ways of increasing recognition of the qualifications of volunteers. Voluntary action could perhaps form part of a vocational programme, returning people to work but also enabling individuals to be recognised for what they have done. That is important, especially for unemployed people but also


for retired people who may have retired early to contribute to the community. The Minister might also consider ways in which unemployed people could contribute.
I hope that the Government will consider a volunteer charter, which would put volunteering at the centre of community life and enable it to be seen as a mainstream activity encouraged by the Government. The Government could help to support the untapped wealth and activity represented by the voluntary sector. They should also consider extending the sharing of good practice: I refer not just to local authorities and health authorities but to the business sector. There are many good ideas in that sector, involving secondment, support and financial activities. The role of Government should be to help to support the voluntary sector to help to bring those good practice ideas together.
Finally, we should pay close attention to funding. Core funding is important but it needs to be established on a longer-term basis than currently. In my area, local government reorganisation has caused some uncertainty about long-term funding and it is important to look not only at core funding but at matching funding. Many voluntary organisations secure resources from the national lottery and from local authorities but require matching funding. For example, an organisation in my constituency has just received £750,000 from the lottery but has to raise £250,000 in the community to trigger that £750,000. That is a great deal to raise locally, but the worth of the project is established locally.
There is much support for the voluntary sector and much activity and initiative on its behalf and Labour will continue to be at the heart of that. There is more that the Government can do to pull the strands together, to look at ways of encouraging the sector and to assist it in doing what it does best—meeting the needs of local communities and having an independent, active campaigning role. I commend the motion to the House.

Mr. Julian Brazier: I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate. I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson) said, but over the years the Government have already taken on board many of the ideas that he has suggested.
Voluntary work plays a fundamental role in the minds of many Conservatives. The Government have a good record on this issue, as the huge increase in charitable funding and the increase in the size of the voluntary sector show. People who work for charities are highly motivated. The majority of them give their time for nothing and we could all give examples of excellent work carried out by local charities. As recently as a fortnight ago, I was working in my local prison canteen wearing a Women's Royal Voluntary Service hat.

Mr. Roger Gale: I am sure my hon. Friend looked very pretty.

Mr. Brazier: I welcome that comment from my Kentish colleague.
I want to focus exclusively on voluntary work among young people. First, I shall deal with the administrative and regulatory problems that are faced by some

organisations that deal with young people and, secondly, I shall speak about the cadet movement. While I am enormously impressed by the large number of organisations that do splendid work with young people, I am concerned about some of their administrative problems. Last year I was privileged to write a pamphlet with John Blashford-Snell, the explorer and well-known youth worker, about some of these problems.
Youth organisations face an extremely complex set of relationships with central and local government and with a number of overlapping co-ordinating bodies in the voluntary sector. I shall give a few examples. Answers to parliamentary questions suggest that the YMCA and youth clubs are getting small grants from the Department of Education and Employment, the Department of the Environment, the Department of National Heritage and the Home Office. One can imagine the amount of administration by the Government and, more importantly, by charities that is involved in getting money from four Government sources. However, the principal focus of youth activity is local government, and some organisations have to deal with several parts of local government.
In addition, there are three major co-ordinating voluntary organisations within the youth movement. There is Youth Clubs UK; then there is the organisation which used to be called the National Association of Boys' Clubs but which now has a much longer and more complicated title, as it sensibly also involves girls' organisations; and the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services. Those bodies all play a partial co-ordinating role and two of them assist in channelling money from the Government.
The complexity for an organisation that is trying to help young people of dealing with so many different organisations is difficult to exaggerate. The chief executive of one project said that he was dealing with no fewer than 10 organisations that were either governmental or wholly or partly funded by the Government.
Some youth organisations face another problem. In a sense the one that I have outlined is a problem of success: it is a welcome fault that so many parts of Government are involved in charity. I shall shortly make some proposals to make life a little simpler. The second problem is much more sinister and arises from our increasingly litigious environment. We all remember the recent story about the rugby referee who was sued for several hundred thousand pounds because of an injury sustained on the field by a player. He was covered by insurance, but many organisations are not fully insured or are not fully aware of the risks. In any case, I am not convinced that insurance is always the answer.
I have received an extremely sad letter from the headmaster of the school that I attended, Wellington college, which is famous for the leaders that it has produced over the years, especially in the armed forces. I was one of its least distinguished pupils. The gist of the letter was that it is becoming extremely hard for any headmaster to give responsibility to pupils. I have since had testimony from the headmaster of another school who wrote in the same vein. Surely one of the most important aims of any organisation for young people, whether it is a school or a voluntary organisation, should be to give young people responsibility. However, it has become increasingly hard to do that because of the risk of being sued if something goes wrong.
There is an almost circular argument. The point of giving people responsibility is to give them the opportunity to make mistakes. If there is no scope for making mistakes, there is no responsibility, but when QCs get hold of those mistakes in court, we can see where they will lead. In framing laws to deal with voluntary organisations and schools, it is important to consider the fact that we want young people to be given responsibility and that that will sometimes lead to mistakes.
We have a good background in trying to create a suitable environment for voluntary organisations. The voluntary sector is having a bigger and bigger stake in schools through local management and by way of grant-maintained schools, which have attracted pupils from a range of backgrounds. We have a terrific record by virtue of increased activity in the voluntary sector and the additional money that is available, not least from the national lottery.
We must address both problems—lack of co-ordination and the threat from lawyers—and we must do so imaginatively. I do not pretend to have the complete solution, but I should like to throw in three ideas. First, just as we now have a formal focus for charities and the voluntary sector as a whole in the Department for National Heritage, so it would be appropriate to designate a Minister to have overall responsibility for youth—perhaps the same person. That does not mean that he should tread on the toes of his colleagues in other Departments, but he should have a co-ordinating role in Government for policies that will affect young people. There is such a job in France and in several English-speaking countries—a Minister for Youth.
Secondly, the Government should try to reorganise the lines of communication. I understand that the interface with voluntary organisations is complicated and we do not want the Government to start nationalising them—that is the last thing that we should do if we wish them to remain effective. Nevertheless, it seems strange to have so many Government and non-Government bodies involved in co-ordinating the activities of voluntary organisations that deal with young people.
On good Conservative principles, it must be possible to achieve some mergers and amalgamations that will lead to a slightly less confusing picture being presented to the heads of youth organisations who are trying to get on with their projects and not spend too much time on administration. We must also give better legal protection against litigation to people involved in youth work. Nobody wants to encourage dangerous practices, but no head of a youth organisation or school should. feel frightened of being sued because they have given a sensible level of genuine responsibility to young people.
I should like to spend a few minutes discussing the cadet movement. In his remarkable book, General Colin Powell comments, as a young teenage black growing up in Brooklyn, about the impact of his introduction to the cadet movement at college. He said:
My experience in high school, on basketball and track teams … had never produced a sense of belonging or many permanent friendships.
On joining the cadet force, he said:
The discipline, the structure, the camaraderie, the sense of belonging were what I craved. I became a leader almost immediately. I found a selflessness within our ranks that reminded me of the caring atmosphere within my family. Race, colour, background, income meant nothing.

He said that they
would go the limit for each other and for the group.
The cadet movement plays a unique and positive role in the life of this country. Some 150,000 young people take part in the sea, air and army cadets and the combined cadet force. They develop a sense of adventure, responsibility, team work and good citizenship. Having served as an officer in the Territorial Army for some 13 years—we have shared most of the centres in which I have served with cadet units, and often took them training with us—I have been constantly impressed by the terrific opportunities that the organisations provide for developing leadership, a sense of discipline and a sense of commitment amongst some of the most deprived young people in the areas. In many cases, it made a terrific difference to their lives in just the way that Colin Powell described so eloquently.
From the beginning of next year, there will be an exciting development in the cadet movement. For the first time ever in this country, the director of reserves and cadets—we will know who it is to be shortly—will be a reservist, someone from the volunteer reserve, instead of a regular general put into the post by the Ministry of Defence. That offers terrific opportunities for the cadets as well as for the volunteer reserves.
I hope that the Department of National Heritage will take an interest in the cadet movement. I was extremely excited to discover that no fewer than 14 cadet organisations—13 of them from the Navy—have managed to obtain grants from the national lottery for capital spending for their training centres. I was deeply impressed by my own sea cadet training centre in Whitstable when I visited recently, but I was concerned at the state of their building. I am encouraging my local cadet centre to get on with bids for national lottery funds.
The cadet movement plays a vital role for our armed forces and provides many high-quality recruits, but its wider value to the community is immeasurable. It is extremely important that, whoever is co-ordinating voluntary and youth policy within the Government—I cannot think of a better person to fill that role than my hon. Friend the Minister of State—should keep a watchful eye from outside the military establishment. When cadet organisations are competing with spare parts for Tornados or the latest piece of kit for a branch of the armed forces, the relatively small sums available to those vital organisations can be threatened. That is why the appointment I mentioned is so welcome, and why a watchful eye is needed.
I end where I began, by saying that voluntary organisations play a vital role in the life of our country. I have been involved with them on and off throughout my life—I did my first voluntary work from school—and I believe that they play a vital role in our community, especially in developing young people.

Mr. Chris Davies: Couched as it is in such general terms, surely no one will disagree with the motion tabled by the leader of the Labour party. We welcome and applaud the contribution made by volunteers to the lives of individuals and communities. Of course we should respect the independence of those organisations and, within


constraints, we want the Government to nurture such organisations, or at least not to go out of their way to harm them, either advertently or inadvertently.
The questions for consideration are what role charities and voluntary organisations should be playing within our society, the extent to which they should be supervised and the degree to which they should be funded from the public purse. There is a danger of believing that voluntary organisations can, in some way, be neatly defined and packaged within some sort of administrative framework. I do not believe they can and I think that that is widely recognised throughout the House. They are too varied and too numerous. Sometimes, in my experience, they can be a little too varied and too numerous.
For example, in Oldham there is a great deal of enthusiasm for animal welfare, yet the shelter of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is in financial difficulties and there are divisions among those running another shelter. Despite that, plans are being made and funds are actively being sought for the promotion of two new shelters. One might hope that the individuals involved would pool their talents, but perhaps there is a risk in suggesting that, because it might curb the entrepreneurial enthusiasm of the volunteers involved—they are very committed people—in a way that might not be for the overall good. Freedom and flexibility must not be curtailed without good reason if voluntary organisations are to flourish.
There are said to be some 240,000 voluntary organisations in Britain working for public benefit, but there are as many as 1.3 million if one includes all the different societies, preservation groups and so on. In Oldham and Rochdale, the Council for Voluntary Service will say that in one borough—the two boroughs are almost identical—there are 300 organisations and in the other there are 1,200. It is simply a matter of definition.

Mr. Rowe: Underlying the debate is the assumption that every voluntary organisation is working for the public benefit. A substantial number of voluntary organisations are doing nothing of the kind, whether they be the National Front or a whole host of others. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the problems with the whole business of defining this difficult area is that what some people believe is for the public benefit, others believe passionately is for the public disbenefit? Would the hon. Gentleman care to comment on that before he continues with his interesting remarks?

Mr. Davies: I agree with the hon. Gentleman, who has hit the nail on the head. Fortunately, the debate so far has not touched upon that difficult subject and, since the Minister and the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman did not comment on it, I shall not do so.
As I was saying, there is a problem of definition. We can compare the attitude of groups in the receiving of public money. Voluntary organisations such as housing associations, which are almost entirely publicly funded, are in the voluntary sector and have voluntary committees of management. In practice, they work like professional landlords running a commercial organisation, although in most cases they are non-profit—making. Like many organisations which are dependent on public sector funding, they have felt the pinch of late because they have become totally dependent on public funds.
That contrasts with an organisation such as the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which has always placed great importance on raising funds voluntarily so that a dependency culture does not develop. I can tell the House that, 600 ft up in Saddleworth, the RNLI's fundraising activities seem to be just as enthusiastic as they are at sea level. Voluntary organisations and charities spend vast sums of money each year—£15 billion by some estimates. Although they control and spend those huge sums, the payment of staff can become divisive.
Criticisms have been directed at some of our most well-known charities working in overseas development when their administrative costs are brought to public attention, yet how can organisations working in such difficult circumstances, handling huge sums of money and requiring full-time organisers with great expertise do anything other than employ full-time professional staff? After all, how many people are prepared to don the hair shirt and make the sacrifice of working for little or nothing for a cause in which they believe? Judging from the recent debate on Members' pay, perhaps we cannot expect too much of people working in the voluntary sector when we are not prepared to ask the same of ourselves.
It is almost a year since I was elected to the House and some nine months since I made my maiden speech. Umpteen contributions in debates, four Adjournment debates, two ten-minute Bills and endless defeats in the Lobbies have not yet dimmed my enthusiasm. If ever my energy wavers, I have only to listen to my opponents.
Like many hon. Members, I make sacrifices. I work long hours, and I have given up many leisure and outside pursuits. I also demand sacrifices of those close to me. When people ask me how many hours I put in as a Member of Parliament, I say that they should ask my four-year-old daughter how much time I spend with her—the answer is, not enough.
I never forget that I am in a privileged position, as I am paid to do a job I really want to do—voicing political beliefs and representing my constituents. Like every hon. Member, I am in that position thanks to the efforts of hundreds of unpaid helpers in the voluntary organisation that is my political party. I rely hugely—as we all do—on the support of those individuals.
I am also aware of the difficulties that can arise when the relationship is blurred between the professional and the amateur—the paid and the unpaid. There is no easy solution. Perhaps there is no solution. The same applies to the Olympic games, where there is no way of defining the difference between amateurs and professionals when they compete against one another.
Idealism is important in politics. If I lose my idealism or betray that felt by others, the support of my volunteer helpers will quickly fade away. Similar difficulties arise when a voluntary organisation performs a function that is considered to be the responsibility of a public authority.
Like the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier), I recently joined the Women's Royal Voluntary Service for a morning to help out with meals on wheels. I went round Saddleworth with a local resident, Ron Bunting of Uppermill. Perhaps I should add that 10 per cent. of all WRVS volunteers are men. We went to see some of my constituents delivering the meals that had been provided by the social services department. I got a great deal of satisfaction out of those few hours of voluntary work. I hope that Mr. Bunting gets the same satisfaction out of


the one day a month that he gives to the WRVS. I enjoyed meeting people, although that is difficult to avoid when one is a Member of Parliament. It is almost a requirement of the job. I also enjoyed talking to my volunteer colleague, helping others and knowing that my tiny contribution enabled Oldham social services department to spend its resources on other useful work around the community.
When a voluntary organisation undertakes a specific task on behalf of the local authority, who is the professional? Is it the organisation—such as Help the Aged, which provides specific services for Rochdale—or is it the council which commissions those services? I find that impossible to answer. It is important for those in positions of public authority to recognise the expertise within voluntary organisations. That respect is all the more deserved because of the financial contribution that voluntary organisations make simply by extending the service provision beyond that provided by the public purse.
The worker voluntary organisations in Rochdale may cost some £2.5 million in public money, but are worth nearly £25 million—the equivalent cost had the work been carried out and paid for directly by the public authority.
Some 21 million people in Britain are involved in voluntary activities, but in my experience only a tiny minority are the movers and shakers who take initiatives, accept responsibilities and make things happen. Many hon. Members will be aware of the saying: if something needs doing, ask a busy person.
It is rather a shame that the character of Linda Snell in "The Archers" on Radio 4 is not entirely sympathetic, because the role she plays within that fictional community has always struck me as of great value to the village of Ambridge. In almost every community, a handful of people make things happen. We should give them every possible thanks and support. The difficulty is knowing how to focus that support in a meaningful manner. I commend the report of the independent commission on the future of the voluntary sector—the Deakin report—which explores many of the issues in detail.
If so many people have never made a physical rather than financial contribution to a charity or voluntary organisation, perhaps the Government could find ways of encouraging them to do so. The sense of purpose, of usefulness, sociability and companionship, all give satisfaction and pleasure to the people who become involved in voluntary organisations. If the Government could find a way positively to encourage more people to take the first steps towards getting involved in the first place, there would be long-term benefit to the community.
I conclude by asking the Minister to consider some particular matters. First, good organisation, a clear financial structure and proper accountability are essential to the running and supervision of voluntary organisations. Nothing destroys the credibility of such an organisation quicker than the mere whiff or suspicion of financial mismanagement. In England, the Charities Commission registers and supervises charities. In Scotland, there is no equivalent organisation and much less public accountability. The Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations has estimated that nearly 50 per cent. of voluntary organisations are unintentionally or deliberately evading the law. Perhaps the Minister would like to bring that to the attention of the Secretary of State for Scotland.
Secondly, voluntary organisations require continuity of funding and a longer-term perspective so that they can make longer-term plans and avoid the hand-to-mouth struggle for funding that so many have to endure year after year. If the Government intend progressively to reduce funding to a voluntary organisation, they should make that clear sufficiently far in advance, so that the organisation can make the necessary structural changes and adjustments rather than sinking ever deeper into financial mire before reaching crisis point.
My third point is about the European social fund and the concerns about it that have arisen over the past year or more. A letter from the Department for Education and Employment to the Oldham council for voluntary services says:
A payment in respect of our final claim for the 1994 ESF programmes has been received from the Commission, but there is insufficient sterling to enable us to make all the payments due … Accordingly you will shortly receive a payment which will take your total grant to 95 per cent. of the value of your final claim".
The Department reminds the recipients of a condition attaching to the approval of their dossier to the effect that
'all payments are subject to the … Department receiving full and appropriate amounts from the European Commission; the Secretary of State for Employment shall not be liable for any deficit in the grant which may arise'",
adding the words:
At this stage we are still hoping that it will not be necessary to invoke this clause".
I hope that the Minister will accept that, although that may all be entirely legal and above board, the reality for voluntary organisations is that they are left being tossed around by the waves in a stormy sea, trapped between huge organisations—the Government and the European Commission. Some contingency funds should be made available to bridge that gap.
Finally, the Minister will know that, some years ago, the Government ruled out changes to charitable status. As a result, human rights organisations, community development groups and others are excluded from charitable status. It has always seemed to me ludicrous and appalling that organisations such as Amnesty International—I acknowledge the point made earlier about Amnesty by the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe)—cannot gain the full financial benefits of charitable status.
I hope that the Minister will consider how changes could be made to accommodate the needs of such organisations, which play such an invaluable role in a way that reflects all that is best and most decent and honourable in humanity. If an organisation such as Amnesty International is not promoting the public benefit, it is difficult to think of an organisation that is. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that point.

Mr. Roger Gale: I shall touch on a significant point that the hon. Member for Littleborough and Saddleworth (Mr. Davies) made, but first I shall take the opportunity to raise briefly three separate but related issues.
First, I wish to use the debate to say thank you. In his opening remarks, my hon. Friend the Minister of State said that the number of voluntary organisations in this country was between 400,000 and 700,000, depending on


how we define them. Most of those seem to be in Kent, which may explain why the Government Benches are dominated tonight by Kent Members. Most of those organisations—dare I say it?—seem to be in my constituency, doing God's work; I mean that literally.
I started an audit in my mind, and began to go through the voluntary organisations with which my constituency is blessed. It was an impossible task. I considered the Herne Bay end of my constituency, and thought of the Strode Park foundation for the disabled, and all the volunteers who raise money for that. Then there is the Queen Victoria memorial hospital's league of friends, and all the people who raise money for that.
We also have the Cabin Radio hospital radio organisation, which has been running for more than 20 years, and all the people who year on year devote their time to it. There are the youth organisations in the town, which I shall say more about later, and all the other people who donate hours and hours of their time to doing things for other people. All those are in Herne Bay alone.
Then I thought about the villages and the Margate end of my constituency, with the Royal National Institute for the Blind home at Westcliff house, the Royal School for Deaf Children, and all the people who support those. Then there are the parent-teacher associations, which are involved in a wide range of fund-raising events for schools.
I thought to myself that there cannot be a Member in the House who has not felt as I do, come Friday or Saturday night when my wife and I find ourselves getting dressed to go out for this week's helping of rubber chicken and Black Forest gateau, and thinking, "Oh Lord, do we really have to do this tonight?" Then we get there and find a room full of people.
For us it is just another event, but for those people it is their once-a-year day, and every person in the room is devoted to the cause for which they have been working all year. It could be the Red Cross or the St. John Ambulance, whose members turn out for all the fund-raising events for the other organisations to ensure that nobody gets hurt, and who do such a sterling job, or it could be the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the Rotary Club or the Lions.
In Margate, we have the Winkle Club and the 12 Nails—organisations of which no one else in the House has ever heard, which raise funds and give money to charity for no other reason than that their members want to help people. On behalf of everybody in the House, I want to say thank you to all those organisations, especially to those who do things for the young people of our constituencies.
My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) rightly talked about the magnificent work done through the cadet organisations—the Army cadets, the Navy cadets and the RAF cadets and, of course, the St. John cadets and the Boys Brigade too. Those are organisations from which young people learn comradeship, discipline and the roots of helping other people, and because of that become the volunteers of tomorrow.
A fortnight ago, I was fortunate enough to spend part of Sunday at the St. Lawrence cricket ground in Canterbury, watching teams of young people from all over Kent

playing "Kwick" cricket. It was all run by volunteers—people doing things in their own time. Some of them were schoolteachers, some youth workers and some voluntary organisers, but they all turn out to encourage young people to do something constructive.
When we talk about young people, everyone thinks of drug taking, rock and roll, graffiti and all the rest of it, but an enormous number of them take part in voluntary, fund-raising activities. It is the kids who are out walking, swimming and doing a sponsored this or that to raise funds to help other people.
There are also the better known organisations, and every constituency has them. For me, the scouting movement—the guides and scouts—is epitomised by Ann Wells of the 1st Margate St. John's troop. Ann has been taking the underprivileged children of my constituency and the Isle of Thanet on summer camp not for one, five or 10 years, but for well nigh 40 years—how she has avoided the attention of the Patronage Secretary, I do not know—every summer, without fail, because she will not let those kids down. Those people are the unsung heroes of this country. When we are talking about volunteering, it behoves all of us to remember them and to say thank you.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House will know that in the tedium olympics of the House of Commons, I bore for England on two subjects—the media and the other is animal welfare—and you would be surprised, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I did not mention animal welfare organisations.
The hon. Member for Littleborough and Saddleworth referred to the sad demise of the RSPCA shelter in the Oldham and Rochdale area and of the efforts of others to set up a new shelter. I very much hope that Marc and Beverley Doyle will be successful in their fund-raising events. I am sure that he is trying to help them and, if I can help him to help them, I will be pleased to do so.
I have a concern which relates in part to some of the organisations on which I have touched and in part to the point that the hon. Member for Littleborough and Saddleworth made about the plethora of voluntary organisations—animal welfare organisations, in particular, but it goes across the board. With his new responsibilities, my hon. Friend the Minister should want to look long and hard at the work and powers of the charity commissioners.
I have a gut feeling—I suspect that it is shared on a cross-party basis—that there are far too many reinventions of the wheel in charitable work. As a consequence, too much hard-earned, hard-won and hard-sponsored money is spent on replication of headquarters, officers, typewriters, telephones and all the other things which together make up charitable and fund-raising work but which, by the same token, ought to be more co-ordinated so that more of the money goes right to the sharp end to help the causes about which we are all concerned.
In thanking people, I want to thank all the animal welfare organisations that do so much for animal welfare and contribute to the work of the all-party animal welfare group, which I am privileged to chair—in particular, the RSPCA and the National Canine Defence League, which provide the secretariat for Pathway—a group that is trying to promote the cause of people with pets who need housing.
People tend to forget that, when the British talk about animal welfare, they are talking about the relationships between animals and people. An enormous number of


people get immense pleasure out of their companion animals. There are organisations helping them—I am thinking in particular of the Pat Dog organisation, of which I am privileged to be a member. It is extraordinary to take an animal into an old people's home or a hospital and to see the pleasure that others gain from the opportunity to touch, feel or talk to that animal.
My second pitch to my hon. Friend the Minister is that, in asking him to seek greater co-ordination among charities, I would encourage him in turn to encourage the national lottery to make funding available to some of those animal charities that undoubtedly have suffered through lack of funds as a result of the introduction of the lottery.
Finally, I must do a little special pleading, and I must declare an interest. I have a godson—a lad called Nicholas, who is a keen sportsman. He has been diagnosed as suffering from a heart disease and, from being a very active sportsman, he has been told virtually overnight, "Stop everything or you may die." He is one of the lucky ones. I understand that between four and eight people a week—no one is quite sure how many—die suddenly in the prime of their lives. Very many of them are athletes and many die as a result of physical exertion because they do not know that they have a heart condition.
An organisation called Cardiac Risk in the Young, or CRY, seeks to promote the screening of young people—especially young athletes, but also the families of people who have suffered such bereavements—because it is believed that the disease may be congenital. My hon. Friend the Minister has a particular interest in voluntary organisations through the national lottery and sport. CRY has applied for national lottery funding. Those young lives could be saved. I urge him to be sympathetic to that appeal.

Mr. Alan Howarth: In debating the future of the voluntary sector, we are debating the nature of our moral community. Two principal schemes of social relations have been set forth over the years in our characteristic public debate: the bureaucratic and the market models. Both ideologies are attempts to provide for moral community and both are necessary, but even in better balance than they are now, they are insufficient. Each allows too much personal distancing, too many moral alibis.
A rich pattern of voluntary action helps to offset the limitations of both the state and the market. There is a range of human needs that the rights-based ideologies of the liberal state fail to acknowledge or succour: needs for belonging, giving, respect, dignity and care. Care in the community is an admirable aspiration and an admirable phrase, but it must fully mean what it says and not be a euphemism for a state and its agencies that usurp neighbourly responsibility or allow neighbours to escape responsibility beyond paying their taxes. If neighbours are strangers, truly there is no such thing as society.
In ascribing such limitations to bureaucratic systems, I do not intend to attack the welfare state. I deplore the disparagement of dependency. It has been a great civilising advance that people in time of need should be able to depend on institutionalised help; but if demands for efficiency and pressures to contain public expenditure

are as great as they have become, there is a bleakness about the welfare state. It makes a vital qualitative difference if welfare state professionals do not have time to listen to the story of an elderly person or hold the hand of a dying one.
We lack adequately expressive political language with which to discuss such requirements of a good society. The terminology of civil society, fraternity, mutuality even, is archaic and fails to evoke with vividness and precision the multifarious and changing possibilities of human social engagement in our times. The Labour party is profoundly right to stress the importance of community and stakeholding. If those terms are liable to sound nostalgic or utopian, it is because they refer to a range of human needs that have been neglected for too long in our conventional political discourse.
Voluntary action goes beyond what the political can provide. We can and must facilitate and promote it, but we cannot specify in performance indicators and efficiency indices the
little, nameless, unremembered, acts
of kindness and of love
which are often in fact remembered but which transcend the limitations of welfare bureaucracies and market relations. It is not possible to guarantee through contracts that the packages of care that are to be bought and sold will be the genuine article and will truly be care.
Professor Deakin and his colleagues have written a splendid report on voluntary action that deserves our careful consideration. They take a synoptic view and analyse valuably the significance for voluntary action of forces of change: the retreat of the state from social responsibility; constraints on the funding of the welfare state; disillusion with conventional politics and the search for means to sustain civil society; the need to champion minorities in our democracy; the effects of widening inequality and persistent discrimination; the altering of family structures; and new technology and its impact on work. The Deakin commission invites us to heed a warning from the historian, Frank Prochaska:
the voluntary sector is swimming into the mouth of Leviathan.
There was a turning point in 1990 when the Home Office efficiency scrutiny laid it down that, in their deals with voluntary organisations,
Departments should establish clear policy objectives for any core or project grant or scheme relating to objectives in departments' planning processes. Grants or schemes which no longer relate to such objectives should be phased out.
With the implementation of that policy, we have seen the Government seek too extensively to capture the voluntary sector for their own purposes.
There can be no objection, of course, to the Government working closely with voluntary organisations, seeking to mobilise the resources of the community for clearly defined purposes that have been agreed in wide debate and insisting on value for money, but I hope that the Minister will agree that there are dangers in the new "contract culture". Those dangers are described in paragraph 2.3.7 of the report, where it refers to
concerns about becoming over-dependent on local authority funding; anxiety that the quality of service to users might conflict with 'value for money' objectives and that competition may upset existing harmonious relationships … possible restrictions on


advocacy and campaigning, problems of sustaining sufficient core funding, lack of freedom to innovate and excessive bureaucracy in monitoring of implementation.
The Association of Directors of Social Services has acknowledged those hazards. What matters is that Whitehall Departments, health authorities and local authorities accept that not only he who pays the piper should call the tune and that voluntary organisations are respected as independent partners pursuing a role complementary to that of the state. There is much matter on the relationship between local government and the voluntary sector for consideration by the new single local authority association for England.
I wonder whether the commission was wise to suggest, as it did, that there should be a new definition of charitable purposes and a new "concordat", as the Deakin commission calls it, between central Government and representatives of the voluntary sector. If a concordat established the principles that the commission proposed, it would be a fine thing, but we should not allow ourselves to forget that when Napoleon established his concordat with Pope Pius VII, he held him captive and took the crown from him to place it on his own head. Although I am sure we can be confident that the Secretary of State entertains no such folie de grandeur, we ought not to place such temptation in the way of Ministers.
The relationship between Government and charities in Britain has historically been a subtle and elusive affair. Wisely, the legislators of 1601, 1883 and 1960 forbore to define charities. Instead, the preamble to the Elizabethan statute itemised a range of highly varied, illustrative fields of charitable undertaking. Subsequent case law and administrative practice have built on that foundation, taking the Elizabethan examples as models to be paralleled in the altered circumstances of later ages. No doubt, in each succeeding generation, as in our own, the absence of clear definition has been found exasperating and the determination of legitimate charitable activity by reference to case law and precedent inhibiting. On the other hand, as the Goodman report observed in 1976,
To define is to confine.
I think it is better otherwise. After all, in an important sense, our charities define us.
The Deakin commission offers Ministers a host of practical suggestions. Rightly, it praises the National Lottery Charities Board for its energy, care and effectiveness in its early work and its resilience in standing up to
virulent, bigoted and even racist criticism.-
I hope that the Secretary of State will respond to the suggestion that the National Lottery Charities Board should be allowed to support self-help and mutual aid groups and to delegate executive as well as consultative functions to its regional bodies.
I particularly hope that the Government, encouraged by the Minister, will consider carefully what the commission says about the benefits system and volunteering. It said:
The benefit system rules must not be a constraint on the ability, especially of young people, to volunteer.
The Government accepted during the passage of the Social Security (Incapacity for Work) Bill that in certain circumstances voluntary work could be classified as

"exempt" work so that disabled volunteers would not necessarily forfeit benefit, provided that their work was within the 16-hour limit. However, the threat of losing benefit and the limiting effect on the hours of paid exempt work that a disabled person can do severely discourage voluntary activity.
Under the Jobseekers Act 1995, the Government have not conceded that voluntary work should be classified, in the jargon, as a "positive outcome"—something that is positively approved as a step towards re-entering employment. Under jobseeker's allowance, an unemployed person doing voluntary work must be continually available for work. That makes it harder for the individual to make a full or sustained commitment to volunteering. At least, as the commission proposes, the Benefits Agency should use the introduction of JSA this autumn to issue the most constructive guidance that it can to benefits offices.
Time prevents me from saying much that I would like to say. As the commission says, the Government need to take the voluntary sector seriously. They should see it as a partner in their quest to nurture what Beveridge called a welfare society and recognise the immense contribution that the voluntary sector can make to the quality of our social experience.

Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent): As has become apparent in all the descriptions that have been given, the voluntary sector is, like Proteus, impossible to grasp—at least in a short debate. It is worth remembering that, like the rest of us, it is capable of distortion in the service of prejudice. Perhaps the most hurtful examples are to be found among religious organisations, whether in the marches and counter-marches in the name of religion in Northern Ireland or in the cruelties and terrorism of the different forms of Islam.
At its best, the voluntary sector offers the best opportunity we have in society of keeping a focus on whole people. One of the great problems for government involves the Haldane doctrine, which says that we should divide government in terms of function rather than in terms of interest. The Government find it almost impossible to see people as whole people; they see them as candidates for housing, for health, for education or for old-age pensions, not as whole people.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will remember that the danger of the contract culture, which has many advantages for the voluntary sector if properly defined, is that it makes it even harder for voluntary organisations entering into contracts to think across departmental boundaries and carry out the lateral thinking that brings people back together as whole people.
I share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) about the plethora of organisations and their ignorance of one another. I once carried out a piece of research in three tiny villages in Fyfe and ascertained how many voluntary organisations there were. I presented my report to the three tiny villages in a village hall one night. The villages were all within five miles of one another and I shall never forget a man who stood up at the back of the hall and said that he had been working for a society for the blind in his village for the past 25 years and had had no idea that there was another organisation working for the blind five miles down the road.
We need to use information technology and the powers of the Charity Commission to put voluntary organisations in touch with each other. They do not have to co-operate and they do not have to like one another, but they should at least know that they are there and can work together if they want to.
There is a desperate need to look at the frontiers between public and voluntary provision. For the past five years, I have been a judge of the Barclay's "new futures" competition. Barclay's has given £6 million over five years to create a competition in which schools can bid for relatively small sums for their particular interest. One of the most depressing features of the huge list of bids is how many of them are aimed at making good the shortcomings in the school system; that should not be the case.
My remarks are disjointed because I am aware of the time limit.
I found it extraordinary that the Deakin report—so good in so many ways—made no mention so far as I could see of the 30,326 justices of the peace in England and Wales, the 4,233 justices in Scotland or the 20,569 councillors in England alone. We must not forget that those people are just as much volunteers as everyone else.
I stress that volunteering develops mankind. The Deakin report states:
There is plentiful evidence that staff secondments, development assignments and volunteering in community activities enhances employee motivation, performance, loyalty and capacity for team work.
As the hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson) stressed, the voluntary sector is valuable in developing individuals. That is why I am passionately disappointed that the Government still have the extraordinary view that if someone who is unemployed sets himself to a medium-term piece of volunteering the benefit that he will derive from that is less than the benefit that he would derive from the often scarce possibility of taking a job that may not last more than a few days or weeks. I believe that that is a huge error.
The ownership of projects is vital, particularly for young people. This society of ours—which takes at least half our young people and keeps them in tutelage until they are at least 25 years old—has grossly underestimated the ability of young people to perform tasks, their desire to perform tasks and their need for support in performing tasks. Today we presented to the three main political parties suggestions from young people as to what might be considered in the party manifestos. The ideas sprang from a day in Coventry, about which I have spoken before. The key note of the day was that the young do not want to take over society, but that they want to be consulted; nor do they believe that they should have everything done for them.
The schools that have controlled bullying have done so by using young people. The local communities that have begun to make inroads into the drug culture have used young people as their ambassadors. Communities that have begun to build bridges between the older generation and other generations have given young people the responsibility of bringing older people back into the community. We underestimate the young people in this country and we do not give them the responsibility that they could take. Above all other things, the voluntary sector in this country should give young people the

opportunity to define what they can do, give them the resources to do it and develop them into the sorts of people that they want to be.

Mr. Andrew Miller: Hon. Members should congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) and for Stockport (Ms Coffey) on the tremendous work that they have done in this consultation exercise. I was privileged to attend a large meeting in Manchester some time ago, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Mr. Benton), at which we heard from a wide range of the voluntary organisations that operate in the north-west.
I am familiar with many of these organisations. Hon. Members will know from looking at the record of Members' interests that I have a connection with the Manufacturing Science and Finance Union, which has a huge number of members operating in the voluntary sector. These people are not just employees of charities and voluntary sector organisations, but an integral part of that sector. Many of those people are extremely well qualified and could command higher salaries in the private sector. They work extremely hard for those organisations because they believe in the ethos that has been described in the debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth made the point—as was described in Labour's "The Road to the Manifesto"—that we do not believe that the state should take over this work, but that there needs to be a better partnership than exists at the present time. One of the issues—I hope that the Minister will take it on board, given his responsibility in the Department of National Heritage—is how, in partnership, we can create the funding opportunities using such mechanisms.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth referred to the national lottery. In my constituency, the local authority has put forward an imaginative scheme under the national lottery for the conversion of an historic building into a centre that can be well used by the voluntary sector. It wishes to get parts of the voluntary sector that have a synergy into the same kind of community so that they can help each other cut down on some of the administrative costs. The Minister should examine such imaginative schemes carefully.
There has been a long debate about which part of Government carries the responsibility for the voluntary sector. We need to recognise the enormous cross-departmental functions that are involved in supporting the voluntary sector and the Government should concentrate on breaking down the vertical, integrated barriers between Departments. Charitable money needs to be used effectively and I am sure that we all agree about that. Better long-term support should be given to some projects, instead of the short-term approach that is adopted at the moment. Applications for support also need to be considered carefully, because the procedures are overly bureaucratic at the moment and, indeed, the Minister acknowledged that in his speech.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth mentioned crime. Today, I received a helpful letter from the Cheshire constabulary in response to an inquiry that I made about the needs of a community that was being plagued by unruly youths. Cheshire police have


adopted an imaginative scheme in which they are working with the voluntary sector to make available, during the summer months, a huge list of voluntary sector organisations that will all work with the police to support young people in that community. That type of partnership is a good illustration of what can be done.
Little mention has been made of the question of housing associations and I shall finish on that point, because I am aware of the pressures on time. The housing association sector is deeply troubled about the impact that the recent enormous changes have had. The Government should reflect on the quotation in Labour's policy statement on the voluntary sector from a senior figure in the housing association sector, who said:
We grew so fast that somewhere along the line we lost our soul.
We must restore the soul to that important sector. I hope that the Minister will take on board many of the suggestions that have been made by people on both sides of the House.

Mr. Jacques Arnold: I welcome this debate on the voluntary sector because volunteering is an essential part of our community and it is one of the great characteristics of the British way of life. I have been closely involved with the Scout movement throughout my youth and for 10 years as a leader in the Scout movement. I have the honour to be the secretary of the all-party Scout Association parliamentary group and it is a sobering thought that one third of the Members of the House, on both sides, has been involved in the Scout Association in their youth.
I remind the House that we are talking about an organisation that admits youngsters, boys and girls, at the age of six to the Beaver section; at the age of eight to the Cub Scout section, which in many ways is the most enthusiastic age group numbering nearly 250,000 young people; at the age of 11 to the Scout section, the main traditional part of the Scout movement; and at the age of 16, to the Venture Scout section. Many of those young men and women go on to become leaders in the movement.
Some 648,000 young people in this country were members of the Scout movement last year, attending weekly meetings and participating in many activities in the open air in summer and at other times of the year. Worldwide, there are 25 million Scouts in 210 countries and it is worth remembering that two thirds are to be found in the developing world.
It is worth considering briefly the aim of the Scout movement—
to promote the development of young people in achieving their full physical, intellectual, social and spiritual potentials as individuals, as responsible citizens and as members of their local, national and international communities.
All the good work achieved by the Scout movement takes place under the leadership of 100,000 dedicated volunteers. These are wonderful people who give up their spare time during the evenings and at weekends. They juggle the various demands of job, family and scouting. The movement depends upon the quality, commitment and enthusiasm of its adult leadership. Volunteers give their time freely to help the development of young people.
All leaders must undertake training to equip themselves to do a better job. The movement's training programme has become recognised by professional trainers as one of the best of its sort.
Youth organisations, however, are vulnerable to applications from unsuitable people, including the irresponsible and the criminal, and from perverts. The Dunblane tragedy was very much an illustration of the potential threat to youth movements such as the Scout Association. The association is extremely effective with its vetting procedures. Any adult offering his or her services to scouting will be checked through the movement's well established vetting procedures.
Those procedures include checks to ascertain whether the applicant has had any contact with scouting in any other area of the United Kingdom and whether his or her record of service was satisfactory. Checks are made against all publicly reported cases of offences against young people. The local references that applicants provide are checked and there is a meeting with local scouting managers and the individual to ensure that he or she is suitable for the intended appointment. There is a system of continuous reporting and monitoring of all leaders.
In the light of Dunblane and other unfortunate incidents, the Government have responded to the problem of vetting. I commend the White Paper published by the Home Office entitled "On the Record: The Government's Proposals for Access to Criminal Records for Employment and Related Purposes in England and Wales". I hope, however, that my hon. Friend the Minister will reconsider the charging proposals. A charge of £10 per inquiry is a hefty burden for the voluntary sector of youth organisations. The Scout Association alone vets 50,000 potential leaders a year. The thought of £500,000 being spent in that way is a considerable deterrent.
There are many organisations with voluntary leaders. The sister organisation, the Girl Guides Association, is one. If the House will indulge me, I pay tribute to my wife, Patricia, who runs, often single-handedly a guide company. There are also the armed forces cadets. I highlight the Gravesend sea cadet unit, which has been displaced as a result of the Ministry of Defence building disposal programme. There are also the Boys Brigade, the Red Cross, St. John Ambulance and the Salvation Army.
When we take account of the work that is undertaken by voluntary organisations and individuals in other areas, such as care of the disabled, the elderly and the chronically sick, along with the work of victim support organisations and bodies linked to sports, conservation, not to mention the work of the citizens advice bureaux, every Member of this place will be aware of the excellent work done by volunteers in his or her constituency.
I have found, year in and year out, that each successive mayor of Gravesham, as he works through his year, comments on the way his eyes have been opened by the voluntary organisations that he visits and works with as called upon by the mayoralty. Their work has had a considerable effect on those who have been fortunate enough to be called to be mayors.
We all know that the National Lottery Charities Board has distributed £380 million to 4,600 charitable bodies. Of the funds distributed through the Millennium fund, half have gone to voluntary organisations. That is additional to the funds distributed by the Foundation for the Sports and the Arts. I want particularly to commend the grants


that have been made to organisations in my constituency, such as the Black Knights marching band of young people who have received money for musical instruments and the transportation of those instruments, the Jugnu Banghra dancers of the Sikh community who have received funds for their facilities, and the MEAPA gymnastics group which has received £250,000 for a gymnasium.
This debate has been of immense value, and it is a commendation of the work of our wonderful volunteers.

Dr. Norman A. Godman: I have been present for the whole debate, but I shall be brief. My wife, Patricia, is both a bailie and a justice of the peace, so I was pleased to hear the tribute paid to JPs and councillors, and presumably Scottish bailies, by the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe).
Along with the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers), I have the honour of representing the House on the executive committee of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. I have to be brief, so I want to fire a couple of questions at the Minister. He may not be able to answer them this evening, but, given his usual courtesy, I art sure that he will write to me.
First, I was pleased that both the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) referred to the important role performed by voluntary organisations and community groups in Northern Ireland, especially at a time such as this. I am proud to be associated with the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action, which plays a significant role in assisting people in both communities and, at the same time, in bringing together members of both traditions in various community activities.
Recently, NICVA commissioned a report into long-term unemployment in Northern Ireland from Professor David Donnison of Glasgow university. In fairness to the Government, I should say that, in response to a written question of mine on 17 July, the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, the right hon. Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler), paid that report a fine compliment.
The Scottish voluntary sector has an annual income of £2 billion, equivalent to 5 per cent. of GDP, and it employs upwards of 40,000 people, who are involved in more than 50,000 forms of voluntary management. We do have problems, to which the Minister, again in fairness to him, referred.
We do not have a charity commission in Scotland, which is a matter for regret. I am not sure that we want the English regulations imposed on Scottish charities, but, as the hon. Member for Littleborough and Saddleworth (Mr. Davies) said, the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations has had to develop a non-statutory register, which has revealed that almost half of Scottish charities—around 10,000—are currently out of touch, and, to quote Lucy Pratt of SCVO, are
either unintentionally or deliberately evading the law. The Scottish Charities Office, a Division of the Crown Office, will react to complaints about individual charities, but does not undertake routine scrutiny.
That is a matter for serious regret. There is a need, as outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), for the Scottish Office to work much more closely with the SCVO.
I recommend to the Minister the SCVO's recent report entitled "Scotland's Lottery". One of its recommendations states:
Some of the estimated £500M the Government gains in tax from the lottery should be reinvested in advertising and in encouraging more planned giving to charities through Give As you Earn, GiftAid, covenants etc.
I said earlier that the upper limit of give-as-you-earn should be increased from its present level of £1,200 to £2,400 per annum. That suggestion should be followed up.
The report makes many other recommendations that would tighten up matters in Scotland in a way that would benefit those who are assisted by all the voluntary organisations in my country.

Mrs. Anne Campbell: This has been a very intelligent and interesting debate, and it has shown how valuable is the voluntary sector in society today. It is an important building block in cementing together the different strands of a diverse culture and in giving a sense of self-worth to those who volunteer.
I acknowledge the massive contribution made by the voluntary sector to British society. The benefits are apparent not only to the beneficiaries but the volunteers themselves. Volunteering promotes self-esteem. It enables volunteers to express views and exert influence on policy makers, both locally and nationally. They have a greater sense of purpose and a greater sense of control over their own lives.
The voluntary sector is supported by the Labour party because volunteers become stakeholders in society—a point made very well by my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Howarth). That is why a new Labour Government will use the proceeds from a windfall tax on the privatised utilities to fund a scheme to get young people back into work or training or into the voluntary sector.
Labour believes that the voluntary sector is a valuable way of engaging many young people in the main stream of society, to give them self-esteem and to help them to help themselves. We also recognise the enormous contribution made by the voluntary sector in improving the quality of life for many people. Most charities are now changing their roles from the traditional paternalistic model, and are moving to a user-led approach that empowers volunteers as individuals rather than simply service charities' beneficiaries.
We are totally behind these changes. We welcome the Deakin report and the proposal of the concordat between central Government and representatives of the sector. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has endorsed this proposal, and I urge the Secretary of State for National Heritage to do the same.
Volunteering is a popular activity. There are 23 million people involved in volunteering. It is more popular as an activity than almost every other pastime apart from dancing.
The hon. Member for Littleborough and Saddleworth said that, if something needed to be done, we should ask a busy person. Well, even so, much volunteering is concentrated in those who are middle-aged, on high incomes and with good educational attainments. But that


is not true of informal volunteering in community care, where it is more likely to be black and ethnic minority as well as lower income groups who are most involved. We should be aware of that, and acknowledge that very important contribution.
We need to look at more ways of involving older people and younger people in voluntary work. We know that those who are paid out-of-pocket expenses are much more likely to volunteer, and that there are also concerns about benefit entitlement for people who are unemployed. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure the House that, when the jobseeker's allowance is introduced next October, jobseekers will not be deterred from volunteering, and nor will those on incapacity benefit or severe disablement allowance.
There has been a great change in the way in which the voluntary sector has interacted with local authorities over the past two or three years. Now, many charitable organisations are contractors for local authority statutory services. This has produced a huge increase in income for many volunteer bodies. In fact, one survey estimated that the statutory income of those dealing with elderly people had doubled while those with services aimed at children and families had increased by 20 per cent.
However, the problem—as ably pointed out by my hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael), for Stratford-on-Avon and for Delyn (Mr. Hanson)—is that the money is tied to specific contracts and services. If it replaces other funding, it prevents charities from doing what they see as important. If voluntary organisations are to retain their independence, they must continue to receive grants that are not tied to specific areas of work. As my hon. Friend the Member for Delyn said, core funding is essential, because it will enable organisations to remain independent.
The Minister mentioned the effect of lottery ticket sales on charitable giving. Earlier, we discussed the family expenditure survey, and the fact that it may not be an accurate reflection of the amount that people give to charities. Its unreliability in estimating such small amounts of expenditure was illustrated by its assessment that lottery ticket sales were 42 per cent. lower than they actually were. It can hardly be relied on to estimate the amount that people put in collection tins and the envelopes left on doorsteps.
The Minister said that the picture was confused, and I agree. An enormous amount of work needs to be done to assess the effect on charities. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations, however, has calculated—through work with National Opinion Polls—that 6.4 per cent. of charitable donations were substituted for lottery tickets, and that mainly the smaller charities were affected. Those are the charities that rely on street collections, door-to-door collections, small raffles and lotteries, and those are the charities that have failed to benefit from the national lottery.
The chairman of the National Lotteries Charities Board, Mr. David Sieff, has said that any small organisation will be able to apply at any time, probably for amounts between £500 and £5,000; but, if we look at the grants given in the past year, we see that grants of less than £10,000 still make up less than 2 per cent. of the total spend. That means that the funds are going to large,

well-organised charities that have the professionalism and expertise to make large successful bids. The Government should recognise that smaller organisations lose because of that. The Community Development Foundation has pointed to a general lack of information and assistance for such groups.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham), the shadow Secretary of State for National Heritage, has produced a leaflet that helps small organisations applying for grants. The Government could follow his lead, by providing assistance for groups that need help. We should also consider the smaller community groups that may benefit from much smaller sums than the minimum limit of £500. Labour is exploring ways of getting cash down to a local level without creating expensive bureaucracies.
The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) highlighted the complexity of funding for youth organisations. I hope that the Minister will make use of his valuable expertise, and will try to simplify the system so that those organisations do not lose.
I realise that time is short, and the Minister has been generous in that regard. Let me add, however, that people have a misperception about the amount of money that goes to charity when they buy their lottery tickets. When members of the public were asked how much of the pound they had spent on their ticket would go to charity, most replied, "17p"; in fact, it is less than 6p. That raises the question whether the proportion given to the various good causes should be reconsidered. It certainly does not tally with people's perception.
There is also the problem of corporate giving. There is room for improvement by companies themselves in regard to donations to charity. Corporate donations to charity in the United Kingdom still amount to only one tenth of donations in the United States. The hon. Member for Mid-Kent mentioned the excellent Barclays new futures scheme, which provides a good example for other commercial organisations.
I acknowledge the work done by my hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff, South and Penarth, and for Stockport (Ms Coffey). I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport was detained on other duties, and was not able to speak and give us the benefit of her valuable expertise from which we could all have learned. Both my hon. Friends worked hard in the consultation with voluntary organisations in helping to evolve Labour policy on the issue.
The voluntary sector is not a way to get cheap welfare. The role of volunteers, and especially carers, must be respected and supported. Everyone in a civilised society must agree with that. They must not be forced to carry their often willingly borne burdens alone. The remarks by the Secretary of State for Health which were reported in The Guardian on 10 July make it clear that he regards the voluntary sector as a way to reduce public expenditure. He said:
Carers and volunteers must look after elderly parents in order to limit their impact on public spending.
That is a disgraceful view of the voluntary sector.
We encourage carers and volunteers to look after elderly parents, but we realise that we must give them the support that they need. Everyone agrees that the voluntary sector is about more than that. We celebrate the unique contribution that it makes to our society, and wish it well for the future.

Mr. Sproat: With the leave of the House, I should like to respond in the few minutes remaining to as many points as possible. The hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) said that we were "celebrating" the voluntary sector. The word was well chosen, and I concur with his sentiment.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr. Gale) said he welcomed the debate as a chance to say thank you to all volunteers at every level. He gave the remarkable example of a lady in his constituency who for 40 years had spent her volunteer time taking under-privileged children on holiday. That is at the heart of what all hon. Members admire about the voluntary sector.
The hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth spoke about the work of the Churches. By happy chance, this very afternoon the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones) brought a delegation from St. John's Methodist church in Connors Quay to see me, and it was interesting to hear about its work. It holds monthly lunches for people whose ages range from 60 to 96, and organises ballet and tap dances for young people and tea rotas in hospitals.
We all applaud the giant charities, but we should remember that most charities are small and consist of local people who do not have much money but who do all they can to help their fellow human beings. I am glad that the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside brought that group to meet me.
The hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth, no doubt unintentionally, cast rather a slur on my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for National Heritage. She is in Atlanta, Georgia, watching the Olympic games in her role as the Secretary of State in charge of sport. The debate was originally scheduled for last Tuesday, but, perfectly fairly, it was moved from then to today by the Opposition.
My right hon. Friend was not able to take part today but had certainly intended to make a powerful opening speech. No one in the Government is keener on voluntary work than my right hon. Friend, and we shall prove that by the way that we shall grip this vital subject in the Department of National Heritage.
The hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson) generously said that, perhaps in the past, the Conservative Government had held the high ground in voluntary work. I do not know whether that is true, but I certainly do not wish to inject party politics into that area. If the other parties are now sharing that high ground, that is to be welcomed, because it must be for the good of those who are helped.
My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) has the territorial decoration, and has 13 years experience in the Territorial Army. From his long experience, he spoke about the difficulties of youth organisations in dealing with so many different bodies. He gave a recent example, which showed that no fewer than 10 different bodies had to be dealt with by one organisation.
My hon. Friend made an extremely important point. Had I but world enough and time, I would deal with it at greater length, but I take note of what he said. I take note also of his extremely important point about litigation. We will look at that in the context of our review of all charity and voluntary subjects.
I know that I have to sit down in about 15 seconds, so that we can deal with the next business. I shall close by emphasising the extent to which the Government remain committed to the voluntary sector.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House welcomes and applauds the massive contribution made by the Voluntary Sector to the lives of individuals and communities throughout Britain and believes that it is the responsibility of Government to nurture the sector while respecting the independence of charities and voluntary organisations.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 14 (Exempted business),

That, at this day's sitting, the consideration of Lords Amendments to certain Commons Amendments, and of a Lords consequential Amendment to the Broadcasting Bill [Lords] and consideration of any Lords Amendments or proposals relating to hills which may be received, may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Brandreth.]

Question agreed to.

Orders of the Day — Broadcasting Bill [Lords]

Lords amendments to Commons amendments, and a Lords consequential amendment, considered.

Orders of the Day — After Clause 66

The Lords have agreed to the amendment made by the Commons: No. 101, insert the following new clause—

Orders of the Day — NOMINATION BY COMMISSION FOR PURPOSES OF SECTION 31(2) OF BROADCASTING ACT 1990

(".— (1) Section 32 of the 1990 Act (nomination of bodies to provide news for regional Channel 3 services) is amended in accordance with subsections (2) to (5).

(2) For subsections (1) to (6) there is substituted—

"(1) With a view to enabling them to nominate bodies corporate as eligible for appointment for the purposes of section 31(2), the Commission shall invite bodies appearing to them to be qualified for nomination to make applications to be so nominated.
(2) Where a body corporate—

(a) applies to the Commission (whether in pursuance of any such invitation or not) to be nominated under this section as a nominated news provider, and
(b) appears to the Commission to be qualified for nomination, the Commission shall so nominate that body.
(3) Subject to subsection (5), any nomination made by the Commission under this section shall remain in force for a period of ten years, and at the end of that period may be renewed by the Commission for a further period of ten years.
(4) Where the Commission are notified by the holders of licences to provide regional Channel 3 services that the appointment of the appointed news provider is due to expire, or to be renewed or terminated in accordance with the terms of the appointment, the Commission shall review the qualification for nomination of all nominated news providers (including the appointed news provider).
(5) If on any such review it appears to the Commission that a body is no longer qualified for nomination they shall (subject to subsection (6)) by notice terminate that body's nomination.
(6) The Commission shall not terminate a body's nomination under subsection (5) unless they have given the body a reasonable opportunity of making representations to them about the proposed termination."

(3) In subsection (9), paragraph (b) is omitted.

(4) In subsection (12), for the words from "appearing" onwards there is substituted "which—

(a) in their opinion is or, if appointed, would be effectively equipped and adequately financed to provide high quality news programmes for broadcasting in regional Channel 3 services; and
(b) appears to them not to be disqualified for being nominated under this section by virtue of this subsection."

(5) In subsection (13)—

(a) in paragraph (b), after "section", where second occurring, there is inserted "as eligible for appointment", and
(b) after paragraph (b) there is inserted—
"and
(c) references to the appointed news provider are references to the person for the time being appointed for the purposes of section 31(2) under the arrangements referred to in section 31 A(a)."

(6) Subsections (2), (4) and (5) do not affect the application of section 32 of the 1990 Act before 1st January 1998 in relation to nomination for the purposes of section 31(2) as originally enacted.") with the following amendment:

No. 101A, in subsection (4), after "appearing", insert ", where second occurring,".

Amendment agreed to.

Clause 116

COMMENCEMENT AND TRANSITIONAL PROVISIONS

The Lords have agreed to the amendment made by the Commons: No. 166, in page 87, line 39, after ("114(1)") insert—
("(f) the entries in Schedule 8 relating to sections 45(8) and
(9) and 47(11) and (12) of the 1990 Act, and section 115(2) so far as relating to those entries, and
(g)") with the following amendments

No. 166A, in line 1, at end insert—
("( ) paragraphs 10B and 13A of Schedule 7 so far as relating to BBC companies (as defined by section 202(1) of the 1990 Act), and section 115(1) so far as relating to those paragraphs in their application to such companies,")

No. 166B, in line 2, after ("sections") insert ("32(9),")

Amendments agreed to.

Schedule 2

AMENDMENTS OF BRODCASTING ACT 1990 RELATING TO RESTRICTIONS ON HOLDING OF LICENCES

The Lords have agreed to the amendment made by the Commons: No. 177, in page 91, line 32, at end insert—

("( ) For sub-paragraph (6) there is substituted—
(6) In this Schedule any reference to a participant with more than a 20 per cent. interest in a body corporate is a reference to a person who—

(a) holds or is beneficially entitled to more than 20 per cent. of the shares in that body, or
(b) possesses more than 20 per cent. of the voting power in that body.
 (7) Sub-paragraph (6) shall have effect subject to the necessary modifications in relation to other references in this Schedule—

(a) to an interest of more than a specified percentage in a body corporate, or
(b) to an interest of a specified percentage or more in a body corporate.
(8) Any reference in this Schedule to a person who is over a particular age is a reference to a person who has attained that age") with the following amendment

No. 177A, in line 17, at end insert—

(".— (1) Paragraph 2 of Part I of Schedule 2 is amended as follows.

(2) At the beginning of sub-paragraph (1) there is inserted "Subject to sub-paragraph (1A)".

(3) After sub-paragraph (1) there is inserted
(1A) For the purposes of this Schedule, a person's holding of shares, or possession of voting power, in a body corporate shall be disregarded if, or to the extent that—
(a) he holds the shares concerned—

(i) as a nominee,
(ii) as a custodian (whether under a trust or by a contract), or


(iii) under an arrangement pursuant to which he has issued, or is to issue, depositary receipts, as defined by section 220(1) of the Companies Act 1985, in respect of the shares concerned, and
(b) he is not entitled to exercise or control the exercise of voting rights in respect of the shares concerned.
(1B) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (1A)(b)—

(a) a person is not entitled to exercise or control the exercise of voting rights in respect of shares if he is bound (whether by contract or otherwise) not to exercise the voting rights, or not to exercise them otherwise than in accordance with the instructions of another, and
(b), voting rights which a person is entitled to exercise or of which he is entitled to control the exercise only in certain circumstances shall be taken into account only when those circumstances have arisen and for long as they continue to obtain.")

Amendment agreed to.

The Lords have agreed to the amendment made by the Commons: No. 185, in page 94, leave out lines 4 to 50 and insert—
("General limit on the holding of licences to provide television services or interests in bodies corporate holding such licences
2.— (1) If any person's audience time, in respect of a period of twelve months ending with the last day of any calendar month, exceeds 15 per cent. of total audience time, he shall not, subject to sub-paragraph (4), at any time in the following month—

(a) hold two or more licences to provide relevant services falling within one or more of the categories specified in paragraph 1(2)(a), (b), (c), (d) or (g),
(b) be a participant with a qualifying interest in two or more bodies corporate each of which holds a licence, or two or more licences, to provide services falling within one or more of those categories,
(c) hold any licence to provide a relevant service falling within any of those categories and be a participant with a qualifying interest in any body corporate which holds such a licence or two or more such licences,
(d) provide a foreign satellite service and either hold any licence to provide a relevant service falling within any of those categories or be a participant with a qualifying interest in a body corporate which holds such a licence or two or more such licences, or
(e) hold a licence to provide relevant services falling within the category specified in paragraph 1(2)(g) and provide two or more such services.
(2) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (1), and subject to sub-paragraph (3), a person's audience time in respect of any period is the aggregate of—

(a) the audience time attributable in respect of that period to each relevant service falling within any of the categories specified in paragraph 1(2)(a), (b), (c), (d) or (g) provided under a licence held by him,
(b) one half of the audience time attributable in respect of that period to any relevant service falling within any of the categories specified in paragraph 1(2)(a), (b), (c),(d) or (g) provided under a licence held by a body corporate which he does not control, but in which he is a participant with a qualifying interest, and
(c) the audience time ttributable in respect of that period to any foreign satellite service provided by him.
(3) For the purposes of calculating a person's audience time in respect of any period in accordance with sub-paragraph (2)—


(a) there shall be included the audience time attributable in respect of that period to each service referred to in that sub-paragraph in respect of which, on the date upon which the calculation of his audience time for the purposes of sub-paragraph (1) is made, he holds the licence, is a participant in the body corporate which holds the licence, or which he provides (as the case may be), irrespective of whether he held the licence, or was a participant in the body corporate which holds the licence or provided the service at any time during the period; and
(b) there shall (for the avoidance of doubt) be excluded the audience time attributable in respect of that period to each service referred to in sub-paragraph (2) in respect of which, prior to the date upon which the calculation of his audience time for the purposes of sub-paragraph (1) is made, he has ceased to hold the licence, or to be a participant in the holder of the licence, or to provide the service (as the case may be).
(4) Sub-paragraph (1) shall not prevent a person from continuing to hold any licence, or to be a participant in a body corporate which holds any licence, or from continuing to provide any service (as the case may be) if and to the extent that arrangements made by him after the end of the period in respect of which his audience time exceeds 15 per cent. of total audience time would cause his audience time, calculated so as to take into account the efffect of those arrangements, not to exceed 15 per cent. of total audience time.
(5) In this paragraph "foreign satellite service" means any service (other than a non-domestic satellite service) which consists in the transmission of television programmes by satellite, is provided on a frequency other than one allocated to the United Kingdom for broadcasting by satellite and either—

(a) appears to the Commission to be intended for general reception in the United Kingdom (whether or not it appears to them to be also intended for general reception elsewhere), or
(b) is (to any extent) relayed by a local delivery service.
(6) References in this paragraph—

(a) to the audience time attributable to any service in respect of any period, or
(b) to total audience time in respect of any period, shall be construed in accordance with paragraph 3.
(7) In this paragraph "qualifying interest" means an interest of more than 20 per cent.
(8) The Secretary of State may by order amend sub-paragraph (7)—

(a) by substituting a different percentage for any percentage for the time being specified there, and
(b) so as to specify different percentages in relation to licences to provide different services.
(9) The Secretary of State may by order amend sub-paragraphs (1)(a), (2)(a) and (b) by adding a reference to relevant services falling within the category specified in paragraph 1 (2)(aa)") with the following amendments:

No. 185A, leave out lines 4 to 7 and insert
("No one person may, at any time when his audience time in respect of the period of twelve months ending with the last day of the preceding calendar month exceeds 15 per cent of total audience time in respect of that period—")

No. 185B, in line 27, leave out
(", and subject to sub-paragraph (3)")

No. 185C, in line 28, after ("time") insert ("at any time ("the relevant time")")

No. 185D, in line 33, at end insert ("at the relevant time")

No. 185E, in line 38, after ("is") insert ("at the relevant time")

No. 185F, in line 41, at end insert ("at the relevant time")

No. 185G, in line 42, leave out sub-paragraphs (3) and (4)

Amendments agreed to.

Schedule 7

OTHER AMENDMENTS OF BROADCASTING ACT 1990

The Lords have agreed to the amendment made by the Commons: No. 282, in page 128, line 9, at end insert—

(". In section 202(1) of the 1990 Act (interpretation)—
(a) after the definition of "broadcast' there is inserted—""a Channel 4 company" means—

(a) any body corporate which is controlled by the Channel Four Television Corporation, or
(b) any body corporate in which the Corporation or any body corporate falling within paragraph (a) above is (to any extent) a participant (as defined in paragraph 1(1) of Part I of Schedule 2);"
(b) in the definition of "connected", for "licence" there is substituted "person", and
(c) after the definition of "programme" there is inserted—""an S4C company" means—

(a) any body corporate which is controlled by the Welsh Authority, or
(b) any body corporate in which the Welsh Authority or any body corporate falling within paragraph (a) above is (to any extent) a participant (as defined in paragraph 1(1) of Part 1 of Schedule 2);"") with the following consequential amendment to the Bill:

No. 282A, in page 45, line 5, leave out
("in relation to his additional services licence")

Consequential amendment agreed to.

PETITION

Rail Link (Ealing)

Mr. Harry Greenway: I beg leave to present a petition from the people of the constituency of Ealing, North, which states:
the constituency of Ealing, North declares its strong support for Harry Greenway, Member of Parliament for Ealing, North, in his opposition to plans to establish a rail link from the Midlands to the Channel Tunnel which would cut through the borough of Ealing.
The rail link would run through seven areas of Metropolitan Open land and Green Belt, including the Perivale Wood and Islip Manor and would vastly increase railway traffic to five heavy freight trains per hour with the noise and pollution that this would bring.
The proposal has incurred enormous opposition from my constituency and myself, because, although we all want to see freight move from road to rail, we do not wish to see pollution of such open areas of land as remain within the borough of Ealing, particularly those in Perivale and Northolt. We could not support a railway operation of this magnitude running within inches of people's homes, to the detriment of their lives.
My constituents have proposed this petition with my strong support. The petition is signed by hundreds of thousands of people.
The petitioners request that the Secretary of State for Transport and Members of the House of Commons reject these proposals of Central Railways.
The Petitioners remain ever more

To lie upon the Table.

Brazilian Mahogany

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Wood.]

Mr. Bill Etherington: If am pleased to have the opportunity to introduce tonight's Adjournment debate. In the pre-Jopling days, it was always a pleasure to raise such debates towards the end of the Session. To some degree that opportunity has been lost, although we have some additional debates on Wednesday mornings.
First, I am not a spokesman for Friends of the Earth. I do not belong to that organisation and I do not agree with it in every respect, however I entirely agree with its stance on the importation of mahogany into Britain, which is based on a shameful trade that does no credit to the Brazilian Government or the British Government.
As hon. Members will be aware, most mahogany comes from Brazil. We are the second largest importer of Brazilian mahogany. Only the United States imports more. I consider what is taking place in Brazil to be deeply shocking and quite disgraceful. I hope that the Government will use their best endeavours within the European Union and in conjunction with the United States to redress the wrongs that have been perpetrated on the people of Brazil, especially the Indian population.
We have heard much about voluntary arrangements. My view is that voluntary arrangements involving Governments and private enterprise are totally unsatisfactory. The only arrangements that have a semblance of working properly are those with the backing of statutory powers. The carnage that takes place in Brazil in order to obtain mahogany is one of the worst examples of voluntary arrangements that anyone could imagine.
Accessible areas are already heavily depleted and, as the wood becomes harder to reach, vast tracts of the countryside are being despoiled to make roadways into more remote areas. Timber is even being procured from reserves that were originally set aside for the indigenous people and the wildlife. Unfortunately, it appears that the British Government are prepared to put all the blame on the Brazilian Government. Although that is true in a superficial sense, it does not alter the fact that we should do much more to redeem that deplorable state of affairs.
There have been clashes between the indigenous population and the logging fraternity, often resulting in fatalities. That is completely unacceptable. If the price of mahogany coming to Britain is the death of people in Brazil, I do not want Britain to import mahogany. I expect that most people would agree with that, but the Government do not see it that way.
Friends of the Earth has joined forces with more than 100 environmental and human rights groups in Brazil. I would have thought that would have had some impact. However, the 100 groups that are working together in Brazil receive no help whatsoever from the British Government.
It is appalling that although fairly recently it almost became possible, with the help of the British Government, to place mahogany in a different category, in which it would have received full protection, the attempt failed because the measure could not achieve a two-thirds majority of the countries involved.
Both the Brazilian and the British Governments, like all those involved in the timber industry, have known for many years that beyond doubt illegal mahogany trading takes place. However, as always under the Conservative Government, the interests of industry are paramount and humanitarian factors take second place. The Government have steadfastly resisted calls for regulation. I shall not repeat what I have said about self-regulation, because everyone with any sense knows that that is a dead duck.
In 1993, following pressure from environmentalists, some logging companies in the Brazilian state of Para and the United Kingdom National Hardwood Association signed an agreement known as the AIMEX agreement. That was all very laudable. The only problem is that it does not work. Only legally obtained mahogany is supposed to be traded, but nothing has changed. The illegal trade is as bad as ever.
Many timber companies hide behind that agreement, citing their support for the AIMEX accord to allay public concern about the illegal mahogany trade. The accord hides the fact that the wood continues to be stolen from Indian lands, often with terrible consequences.
Information has been obtained from the Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Natural Resources—IBAMA—from the Brazilian National Indian Foundation—FUNAI—and from the district attorney's office, and the proof is there beyond doubt. No one denies it, but still there is no action.
It seems that the IBAMA, the regulatory body involved—if we can call it regulatory; monitoring body sounds more appropriate—has withheld information on the illegal activities. Logging in indigenous reserves contravenes the Brazilian constitution, which makes commercial activities in those reserves illegal. Still this country imports timber, knowing full well that it has been illegally gained.
The violence against the Indians is perhaps the most appalling feature. There have been five murders and numerous cases of aggression, with people being battered and damage to Indian property. Still it goes on. I have not heard a whimper from the Government about it.
What makes things worse is the fact that the Brazilian Government are content to go along with the situation. Prosecutions for illegal timber trading have been few and far between. Friends of the Earth has obtained an appalling detailed document about the carnage that takes place.
The Brazilian Ministry of Justice has been involved, and has been informed that there were 300 invaders in the Sarare indigenous area, including 30 logging companies that were taking timber illegally. That seems almost like a form of land piracy—the sort of thing that occurred in years gone by when people were attacked on the high seas and their goods seized and illicitly disposed of. What is going on has all the hallmarks of that type of activity. The position is now desperate.
The FUNAI president sent a memo asking for 15 agents of the Brazilian Government to be sent to the Kayapó area to help the Indians evict the loggers. But it seems that the Brazilian Government have neither the political will nor the resources to put their own house in order.
That does not excuse the United Kingdom Government, who willingly comply with the situation and continue to allow the imports. In a country that prides itself on being civilised and talks about being environmentally responsible, the British citizenry have every right to expect a more forthright attitude.
Why cannot the British Government consult the United States and see if they can do something? At one time, the United States objected to the trade, but unfortunately—a bit like in Britain—once a few multinationals put pressure on the Government, the will to do something seems to evaporate. I would like to think that my country is prepared to stand up and do something about it, but that seems to be wishful thinking on my behalf at the moment.
I could go on at great length about the deaths and murders and the fact that ill-protected Indians living in fairly primitive conditions are being treated in a disgraceful manner by the loggers—that is the term that is used for those people.The situation is deplorable.
As recently as tonight, I received a letter from another group—Earth Care—asking me what I am prepared to do about a similar situation in central Africa. What am I supposed to do? I am just a humble Back Bencher. I look to the Government—not one I have a lot of faith in—to do something about the problem, but action does not seem to be forthcoming. It is about time that a little more emphasis was placed on the Government combining with the European Union, which is the most powerful trading organisation on earth, to bring some pressure to bear on the Brazilian Government and coerce them into fulfilling their responsibilities.
If Conservative central office is to be believed, which is always questionable, I understand that it will not be too long before Brazil overtakes this country in terms of prosperity. If that is the case, we need to act quickly. Once it has overtaken us, we will be listened to even less.
Obviously, the management plans of the Brazilian Government are not working. They need a little moral support and pressure. Among this pile of information here, I have a deplorable letter from the Overseas Development Agency, which virtually states that there is nothing to be done. I do not underestimate the fact that, in specific terms and speaking constitutionally, the Government have raised some fairly half-hearted objections. I have here a copy of a reply from the ODA to Friends of the Earth, dated 17 July, which makes grim and depressing reading. As always, the Government share the concerns about the environment, but once again, the letter states that they
continue to believe that primary responsibility for ensuring that mahogany extraction is carried out lawfully rests of course with the Government of Brazil.
That seems to mean that nothing much will be done.
The only encouraging thing in the letter is that there appears to have been a change of Ministers in Brazil and the new man is prepared "to revamp" the situation and
crack down on illegal trading in natural resources, including mahogany.

I hope that the United Kingdom Government will give him some encouragement in his quest.
The letter to Friends of the Earth is from John Moncrieff of the environment policy department of the ODA. He states that it would be useless to go to the European Community. It would be because it has been wound up for quite a long time—it is now the European Union and I am surprised that official Government documentation still talks about the European Community.
There is one little bit of brightness on the horizon. The letter also states
The Government does however share your concern about this species and will continue to monitor trade and take action if necessary.
Although the whole affair is a catalogue of depression and disaster, I do not want to be too carping and take away from the United Kingdom Government the fact they have gone through some fairly half-hearted motions and have agreed in writing that something should be done. The Government say that they agree that something should be done. I want the Minister to give me some reassurance that this country will try some action.
The Government told us that sanctions would not work in South Africa but they worked very well. The same people who were lauding Nelson Mandela when he was here recently were saying not so long ago that nothing could be done about South Africa by Britain because it was an internal matter and sanctions would not work. I hope that we will get something more positive and forthright on this issue.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. James Clappison): It is important that timber extraction should be carried out lawfully, with conservation safeguards and full regard to the interests of the people living in the forest. Before I come to the Government's policies on that, I shall deal briefly with the remarks made by the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Etherington) about the agreements entered into by the National Hardwood Association.
To supplement Brazilian Government controls over timber extraction and export, the NHA signed an agreement with the exporters' association of the region from which most of the UK's imports of Brazilian mahogany originate. Checks and documentation aim to provide NHA members with assurances that the timber that they buy has been logged in accordance with Brazilian laws. The NHA has a formal procedure to deal with complaints about alleged illegal activities. I understand that it is examining several such allegations. In addition, I understand that an NHA delegation is in Brazil for talks with its Government and exporters about the mahogany trade. It is visiting logging areas and will report on its findings.
The UK timber trade is right to take allegations of illegal activity seriously, but the primary responsibility for enforcing Brazilian national legislation must lie with the Brazilian Government. Unilateral action by the United Kingdom outside the framework of international agreements would be damaging to the co-operation on which those agreements depend and to the advancement of global measures to promote environmental action.
There is already an agreed framework for regulating international trade in wild plants and animals: CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which has been ratified by more than 130 countries, including the United Kingdom and Brazil. Under CITES, commercial trade in more than 800 species is banned and a further 25,000 commercially traded species are subject to checks and licensing procedures. As the hon. Gentleman said, application of the controls requires the consent of two thirds of the CITES parties.
At the last conference in 1994, a proposal to regulate, but not ban, trade in Brazilian mahogany was defeated. The United Kingdom supported the proposal on the basis of the scientific evidence but the conference took a different view. There was extensive discussion and various options were examined by a working group that met over two days. Finally, the conference decided that CITES should not intervene in the mahogany trade.
It would be wrong to accept only those conference decisions that we fully support and ignore the rest. Stricter import measures by EU member states normally apply only to species that a CITES conference has already agreed to add to the convention. That is not so in this case. International agreements will not work without the support of the countries that sign up to them. A European Community ban on imports of Brazilian mahogany after a conference decision to reject less severe measures would dangerously strain a convention that recognises that major decisions should reflect the will of the parties. That would be a setback for conservation, not an advance.
As far as possible, we must work within CITES. The last conference endorsed a United Kingdom initiative to establish a international working group to examine CITES-related timber issues. The group made good progress at its last meeting in London at the end of last year and will meet again in September before reporting to the next CITES conference 11 months from now. That conference may also have before it fresh proposals to add Brazilian mahogany to CITES. If so, we will decide our position after reviewing the evidence, including any factors that may have changed. In the meantime, a more limited CITES monitoring scheme for Brazilian mahogany came into effect November last year. We hope that that will yield useful additional data in due course.
More direct Government involvement with forest management in Brazil is being pursued following the signing of a memorandum of understanding on environmental co-operation with the Brazilian Government. Under this accord, the Overseas Development Administration has funded £19 million-worth of projects, mainly on forestry. The aim is to promote sustainable forest management and strengthen environmental institutions.
We also aim to advance wider international discussion on improving forest management. At the earth summit in Rio in 1992, the United Kingdom played a leading role in ensuring the agreement of a statement of principles on the sustainable management of the world's forests. That was the first international consensus on the need to conserve the world's forests.
European countries followed up Rio with a commitment to the Helsinki guidelines for sustainable forest management. Thirty eight European countries are now committed to implementation of those guidelines. In 1994, we published "Sustainable Forestry: The UK Programme", which details United Kingdom action to

pursue sustainable forest management at home, and promote the conservation and sustainable development of all the world's forests.
The United Kingdom has also played a major role in establishing the United Nations intergovernmental panel on forests, which will report to the Commission on Sustainable Development in 1997 with specific proposals to follow up the principles agreed at Rio. We hope that the panel will produce agreement on criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management on the basis of national plans, and devise a mechanism for periodic international review of the forestry sector.
Improving the management of the world's forests requires international co-operation rather than confrontation. Of course we must do our best to ensure that the timber that we import, from whichever country, has been harvested legally. I believe that the United Kingdom timber trade is acting responsibly through its discussions with the Brazilian authorities, through the formal agreement it has signed with exporting companies, and by its willingness to investigate complaints about alleged wrongdoings.
One has to ask whether driving exports of mahogany away from the United Kingdom to other places where importers might take their responsibilities less seriously would best serve the interests of conservation. I doubt that it would, and I do not favour a unilateral ban on imports of Brazilian mahogany into the United Kingdom or the European Community as a whole.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: I had the good fortune to go to Altamira on the Xingu river in 1989, where the Kayapó put forward a number of proposals for the safeguarding of their forest. I listened carefully to what the Minister said and I should like to put three points to him.
First, what recommendations made at the intergovernmental conference are being pursued for 1997?
Secondly, on the issue of the Kayapó, which my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Etherington) raised, it has been reported in the press that Pai-Kan and others have brought various complaints about the infringement of their lands to the notice of the Brazilian Government. Has that been discussed with the Brazilian Government? I took Pai-Kan to see Mr. Speaker Weatherill on a previous occasion. He was my guest in the House, as he had been Ghillean Prance's guest at Kew.
The third point is about long-term financial help to the Brazilian Government. Many Brazilians argue that, if the Amazonian rain forest is really the lung of the world, the world has certain responsibilities in helping us keep it. I wonder whether the Minister, in the short time that he has, will comment on what I hope were those constructive points.

Mr. Clappison: I will deal with the three points in the order in which the hon. Gentleman raised them. On the point about our international commitments and the report back to the relevant international conventions, I think that I made it clear that we are approaching this by upholding the principle of sustainable management of forests and encouraging each country to draw up national plans for sustainable management. As I am sure the hon. Gentleman, with his interest in the subject, well knows, we played a leading part in the Rio convention and in the important commitments that were made on forestry there.
The hon. Gentleman's second point about the gentleman and the specific area related to detailed matters, which I shall look into in the light of his comments.
The hon. Gentleman's third point was interesting. As I said in my speech, the Overseas Development Administration has entered into a memorandum of

understanding with the Brazilian Government for £19 million worth of sustainable projects in Brazil. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that that is a fairly substantial amount to commit to an important project.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Ten o'clock.